Other Men It Is Said Have Seen Angels
by Magic Within Us
Summary: Part one of a slightly more realistic rewrite of the Twilight series. Bella Swan, a withdrawn and snobbish teen, is confronted with a move from Arizona to Washington to live with her police chief father after her mother remarries. She expects to be dead of boredom within the year, but finds that quiet, rainy Forks has far more dangerous secrets than she ever could have imagined.
1. Chapter 1

_"The hours I spend with you I look upon as sort of a perfumed garden, a dim twilight, and a fountain singing to it. You and you alone make me feel that I am alive. Other men it is said have seen angels, but I have seen thee and thou art enough." - George Edward Moore_

CHAPTER ONE

MY PARENTS DIVORCED when I was only a few months old. I was the end product of a whirlwind high school romance; a fairy tale where the quiet, handsome football star and the lively, naïve prom queen really did find themselves in one another. But it didn't last. My mom, Renée, had always vowed that she'd escape the dullness and drudgery of small town life, where everyone knew everyone, where people were born and raised and died under heavy clouds and the constant threat of rain and mist in Forks, Washington. My dad, Charlie, was not of the same opinion. His family, the Swans, had resided in Forks for generation after generation. Forks was home. It was not a matter they discussed much while dating, as it always resulted in an argument. Maybe he entertained the idea of abandoning Forks for at least a short while, to placate my mom. I don't know.

I do know they went tearing down the highway not very long after getting out of high school to marry in Vegas, and their first real fight was over the course of their honeymoon there, as Mom fought her hardest to convince Dad they should never go back. But back they came, and Mom found out she was pregnant with me a week or so after her return. She remained in Forks for the next eight months, and as she often told me, in a voice dripping with theatrics, that it "almost killed her". There was a hint of truth to her claim- I was born premature and was so weak and sickly that I remained in the hospital for another week until I was released to them. So in reality, I guess it almost killed _me_.

Mom and Dad stayed together for three more months, and then she was gone and me with her as soon as he agreed to sign divorce papers. Their marriage had lasted roughly a year. Me, that sickly baby, Isabella Marie Swan, named for both my grandmothers, wouldn't return to Forks until I was four, and that was for a month in the summer with my dad. In fact, I spent a month in Forks every summer with him from then on until I was fourteen. That was my final summer in Forks. When I was fourteen I was fresh into my teens and fresh into cultivating a biting sense of sarcasm, a permanent sense of moodiness, and a desire to do whatever _I _wanted. Mom had no problem with my change in attitude; I think she actually enjoyed it. I'd always been mature for my age; quiet, the kind of kid who hated birthday parties and wanted nothing more than to spend recesses reading inside and maybe helping the teacher wipe down the chalkboard. When I suddenly started acting my age Mom was thrilled. Dad... was not so thrilled. He'd always been a relatively easygoing parent, if a bit more straitlaced and uptight than Mom, but that was to be expected: he was a cop, after all. But my refusal to come up to Forks from my home with Mom in Arizona caught him firmly off guard.

What was he supposed to do? I wasn't opposed to seeing him- I'd always taken after him, personality wise, anyways, though I was the picture of my mom- but I was dead set on never returning to Forks again. Ever. As July approached, the month I always spent with him, there were a series of tense phone spats, with Mom acting as a mediator between us. Though they hadn't parted on good terms, my parents had never, ever fought in front of me in my memory. I was lucky in that regard; I'd been far too young to even remember their split, never mind them fighting. I had no memories of an unhappy marriage. I had no memories of any marriage, period.

Eventually, a compromise was negotiated. From now on, Dad would come down to Phoenix for a month, but I'd have to spend every minute with him. This wasn't a big deal for me. I didn't have many friends, and I was fourteen; my social life was hardly thriving. I never did much of anything in the summer when I wasn't in Forks besides spend time with Mom and walk to the library to read the day away. There would be no trips to the library while Dad visited, but I managed, mostly because I checked out as many books as possible the week before. Dad was not much of a reader, but he was a man of few words, and he had no problem just sitting watching television in the living room with the air conditioner on full blast while I read next to him on the couch. This was how the summers when I was fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen were spent. Mom would go off traveling with a few girlfriends, so Dad and I could have the condo to ourselves.

Dad was never totally comfortable staying there. It screamed "Mom", after all, not a middle aged, slightly overweight cop. But he put up with it because he loved me, and I grew out of the attitude because I loved him too. We rarely said it to each other, but it was there whenever we sat next to each other in companionable silence, and whenever Dad caved and told me that he didn't care if I walked to the library while he watched the ball game, so long as I made dinner. Mom wasn't much of a cook, plain and simple, and after classes at the local community center's kitchen I felt like a top chef capable of anything… Or at least decent mac and cheese.

Visits with Dad went that way until the year I was sixteen, the year Mom met Phil. Phil was newly turned thirty, five years younger than Mom, and he played minor league baseball. I liked Phil, as far as potential stepfathers went. He wasn't creepy, he wasn't too old or _too _young (though I wasn't entirely happy about the five year gap between him and Mom) and he didn't try to be my dad or bond with me or anything like that. He was perfectly friendly, and he never called me Isabella (Mom must have warned him beforehand, because using my full name was a major no-no with me), but he kept his distance, and I was more than okay with that. Things moved fairly quickly, but I wasn't surprised. Mom had been dating regularly since I was in middle school, and I was regaled with tales of clingy, weird, boring, or jerky dates and occasionally boyfriends all the way up until Phil. Phil was different.

Mom was a young soul, whereas I was often referred to as a forty year old trapped in the body of a teenage girl. I would have been more offended by that particular comment if it wasn't so true. Mom and I balanced each other perfectly. I brought her back down to Earth, she reminded me that it was okay to be a little reckless sometimes. I calmed her down, she got me to smile. I reminded her when she forgot things, she distracted me from my worries. Phil was like the balance between both of our more extreme personalities. Phil was good for Mom; he could be ridiculous with her but also watch out for her. I approved, and when he tentatively asked me how I'd feel about them getting married, I even gave him one of my rare, if one armed, hugs.

They'd met while Mom was off "adventuring" as she called it while Dad stayed with me in Phoenix. That was the July before the September I turned sixteen, the September of my junior year of high school. They were dating by August, Phil proposed in October, and though the whole thing sounded crazy, had themselves a Christmas wedding. I was Mom's maid of honor, probably the youngest one ever. It was cute, I had to admit. But I had a sense of foreboding the entire time, because I knew what was coming. Because of Phil's job, they'd be moving to Florida.

And I wouldn't be moving with them.

The choice was entirely my own, and it was the catalyst for the biggest, longest fight Mom and I ever had. She was insistent that we could make things work in Phoenix. She could stay there with me while I finished my junior and senior year of high school. It wouldn't be the end of the world. But I felt differently. She and Phil loved each other, and she'd be devastated having to spend that long apart from him. Keep in mind that this was the beginning of 2005- there was no video chatting, no social media that adults used to keep track of each other. It was cell phone calls and emails, and I had to admit I had a bit of a martyr complex. I'd feel guilty for a long, long time if I continued to be the thing in between Mom and her new husband. I wanted them to be happy, and if that meant me moving to Forks to live with Dad… well, I'd survive.

Mom was horrified by the very idea, as if I was suggesting throwing myself off the top of a building for her sake. I did my best to act like I'd warmed up to Forks over the course of my years away from it. That wasn't true, of course. I could no sooner warm up to Forks then I could to the notion of a slow and painful death. But I didn't _hate _it. Dreaded it, yes. Found it mind numbingly, soul suckingly boring and depressing, yes. But it was Dad's town. I couldn't hate it. And this was, I assured myself, for the best. It wasn't as if I'd be leaving the country. Yes, Mom would be all the way in Florida, but we could still keep in touch, and I could visit. It was better, I told myself, for us to be apart then to force her to spend a year and a half across the country from Phil. That was the sort of thing that could kill a marriage, and I didn't want Mom to be divorced twice. Besides, Dad and I got along, and we had similar interests, or at least one: peace and quiet. Maybe this would be good for me. A dramatic change in scenery, sure, but it wasn't like I was leaving everything and everyone behind.

I'd never really fit in at my large high school in Phoenix. I had a few friends, but I'd never managed to make a best friend, or entirely entrench myself in one group. I was smart, but I hated raising my hand in class and I almost always did badly on projects that had to be presented in front of people. I was pretty in a plain way, but I wasn't stunning. I was pale, far too pale for someone who lived in Arizona. I didn't tan, but I didn't burn, either. My skin just... didn't do much of anything, really. My hair was straight, brown, reached mid back, and matched my similarly brown eyes. My face was a bit long, my nose sharp, and my lips thin. I was 5'4" and of a scrawny build. I'd been asked out once or twice before, and I'd been on a few dates, but I'd never had a steady, long term boyfriend.

I had flights of arrogance, spells of snobbery, and I was so flat in my sarcasm and tone that my attempts at jokes often just made people uncomfortable. I wasn't easily excited, but I wasn't easily upset. I didn't usually react the way people wanted or expected me to. I found it hard for to open up to people I didn't know very well. I was generally supportive and extremely protective of the people I cared about, but I wasn't always sure how to show it. I liked feeling needed, but the list of people that needed me was very short. My friends at school didn't. I was just another face in the group, quiet Bella, usually with a book in hand, pretty but socially awkward. A nice enough klutz.

No, I liked Phoenix for the setting; because it was familiar but unfamiliar at the same time, because the hot sun beat down on a city that was vibrant, that had a pulse, that seemed to grow and move with me. I liked it because I could get lost in it, because I didn't know every face I passed. Forks, in contrast, seemed stuck in time, never changing, always the same, forever green and saturated with rain. Forever cloudy and grim. I was a little worried that if I set foot in Forks again, I'd remain there for the rest of my life. An eternal prison sentence.

But I was also stubborn, and if I had to move to Forks for the good of Mom and Phil, I'd move to Forks. To me, anything else would have been selfish. And so I convinced Mom. I'd been working on her since the fall, and one thing I was good at was hiding my feelings. Mom was an open book of emotions, but I was more guarded, more closed off. What I felt was intensely private. I eventually convinced her that while I wasn't necessarily _delighted _to be moving to Forks, I was more than okay with it, even optimistic about the change. That I could be happy there. I wasn't too sure about that, but I decided that I should be happy there, and if I ingrained it in myself that I should be happy there, maybe I _could_ actually make myself happy there. Mind over matter.

And so towards the end of January Mom drove me to the airport, and we said our goodbyes. The blue sky seemed to stretch on endlessly above us. I stared out the window the entire ride and Mom, for once, was quiet and subdued. She barely said a word to me until we parked, and then she sat there for a moment, looking at the parking gear as if she debating putting the car out of park and driving away before I could get out. I wondered if she was mad at me, but when she was angry she tended to yell. Mom believed in getting feelings out quickly and completely. She didn't like to bottle things up as Dad and I did, and she was probably healthier for it. I shifted in my seat awkwardly and wondered how I should phrase an apology, when finally she spoke, her voice small and quavering. "I love you more than anything, Bella."

I wasn't really shocked by her emotional declaration of feelings, since she was prone to them, but I was made uncomfortable by the tremble in her voice. It was hard to feel sorry for myself right now. This clearly wasn't going to be easy for her, either.

"I don't want you to think I love you any less because of this," she confessed. "Oh, Bella, you don't have to do this. You might not regret it right now, but I don't want you to realize you hate me in a couple years." She looked genuinely frightened of the possibility. "_Mom_," I protested. "I'm _fine_. This is just what's best for everyone." She was making me nervous.

"I just want 'everyone' to include you," she said defensively. "You're seventeen, honey. Now is the time to think of yourself. You can worry about 'everyone' later. I wish I was half as mature as you are now when I was your age. It would have saved me from a lot of bad choices." She laughed, but it faded much quicker than usual. "But maybe then I wouldn't have married your dad and had you. We didn't work out, but your dad's a good man and I'm glad you have him as a father. And Phil is the love of my life, but you will _always_ be my daughter." She was staring at me, her wide brown eyes intense and serious for once, hands gripping the steering wheel tightly. I hoped she didn't start crying; then I might break down a little too.

I looked away after a moment and slowly undid my seatbelt. "You'll always be my mom. Mom, you're going be happy traveling around with Phil, and I'll be happy living with Dad. I'd be happy living with Dad anywhere. The fact that it's Forks isn't the end of the world." I leaned over and squeezed her shoulder, and she smiled waveringly and swatted at me as she undid her own seatbelt.

"Oh, let me be the mother right now!" She grabbed me in a tight, bone crushing hug, the sort of hug she gave best, and the sort of hug that said 'I hate to let you go'. Somehow, knowing that gave me comfort as I got on the plane and when I watched Arizona disappear beneath me.

The flight was four hours. I slept for most of it, and read when I wasn't sleeping. It was around noon when the plane left Phoenix, and late afternoon when it landed in Seattle. I got an early dinner in the airport while waiting for the much smaller plane that would take me to Port Angeles, the nearest city with an airport to Forks. The plane ride to Port Angeles was much bumpier; no chance of a nap.

I finished my book during it; a battered copy of _Sense and Sensibility_. I was a romantic at heart, despite my practicality. I liked classical music and romance novels, and I sometimes fantasized about living in another age, where there were courtships and suitors and balls. I'd always been guilty about my admittedly childish dreams of that. Sometimes I wondered if it was because my parents were divorced, or because I was so quick to see fault with every boy who showed interest in me. I was the last off the plane. It was raining steadily, of course, but I could make out the figure of my dad, waiting for me with the cruiser.

I hurried over, managing to soak my shoes and the hem of my jeans in not one but two large puddles. I groaned internally. It was another hour in the car to Forks, and I wasn't looking forward to spending it wet. I forced a smile on my face and waved jerkily as I approached, before swearing under my breath as my luggage got caught on a rut in the pavement. I yanked it away, and almost slipped as a result. Dad took pity and hurried over to take it from me.

"Welcome back, Bells." He shot me a rare slow spreading grin as he easily lifted up my rolling suitcase. "Get the trunk?" I popped it and stood aside, flinching as cold rain trickling down my neck. I'd bought tons of new winter clothing for the move, but I was just wearing a cardigan over a blouse. My faded jeans were already soaked, and my shoes were squishy. After Dad closed the trunk he went in for a hug, if somewhat hesitantly, so I reciprocated a little more warmly than was the norm for me.

I could tell he was thrilled to have me living with him, but nervous and unsure all the same. Mom never would have been able to tell all that just from looking at him, but I was like him. I knew. And I was nervous too. A new high school was bad enough, but living with Dad… I was used to a certain degree of independence. It wasn't as though Dad was clingy or overbearing, but I'd never even had a curfew before. Mom didn't mind if I didn't come straight from school, or if I left the house without telling her. She always joked that she trusted me more than she trusted herself. I usually left notes for her, of course, but I couldn't remember the last time she'd even scolded me about something. I was a "good kid". I didn't do anything that warranted being yelled at or punished for. I kept my head down. I didn't party, I didn't drink, I didn't do drugs, and I didn't sneak out to have sex.

But Dad might expect me to check in with him more often, to ask him if I could go places rather than flat out tell him where I was going. He was still a cop after all. Chief of police in Forks now, actually. People would be naturally wary of me because I was a stranger, even if my dad was well liked and well respected in the community. Everyone knew my name, but no one had seen me in Forks in years. And my mom no doubt had a reputation as the flighty bird that'd taken off with the chief's daughter and ended up settling down in Phoenix, of all places. I was a city kid entering a small town. The pressure on me was a bit much. I felt a little sick just thinking about it, as I pulled away from Dad and made for the passenger seat of the cruiser, which smelled faintly of the woods, breath mints, and really old cologne.

I settled into the thankfully warm seat and cranked up the heat while Dad got in and pulled out of the parking spot. No one said anything until we had left the airport and were driving through Port Angeles. It was raining too hard now to look out the windows, so I settled for watching Dad. "It's been a while since you were back to Forks." He started off by stating the obvious, but I didn't mind. "Yeah," I agreed. "I'm... I'm looking forward to it."

He made a sort of grunt of agreement before he asked how Mom and Phil were doing. I could never be sure of his opinion of Mom's relationship with Phil. He'd never spoken badly of my mom in front of me, and neither had she of him. Mom talked openly about why they'd broken up, but she tried to avoid insulting my dad when she did. Dad just didn't talk about the divorce, period. I had no idea if he was over Mom or not. He certainly wasn't dating anyone, so maybe the bachelor life suited him.

"They're good. I think Mom's really happy with him," I said, and was relieved that I still sounded fond about things. I didn't want Mom's fear of me ending up bitter about this to become a reality.

"That's good." Conversations with Dad tended to go like this. I was used to it. If he'd been Chatty Cathy I would have been alarmed. Dad only spoke a lot when he was upset, and he only got upset when something was seriously wrong. He didn't speak again until we were out of Port Angeles and on the highway, but by the way he cast a sidelong glance my way before he began I suspected he was gauging my current mood. I did my best to look as lighthearted as possible, and even hummed a little along with the radio for effect.

"I got a car for you," he finally announced. I straightened up in my seat, shocked. "What- you did? Really?" Dad had promised he'd help me get a car, but I hadn't thought I'd be getting my hands on one this quickly. I was happily surprised to hear otherwise.

He looked thrilled at my response. "Yeah, a Chevy. Billy Black- you remember him, don't you, from La Push? He offered to sell it to me cheap, since he can't drive anymore, now that he's in that wheelchair."

I wasn't sure how I felt about it being a truck; I'd never driven a truck before, and this one was bound to be ancient, given that it was coming from Billy Black. He couldn't be much older than fifty- if I remembered him right his kids were roughly around my age, the daughters older, the son a little younger- but he'd always seemed older to me. Maybe Dad's mustache was what was keeping _him_ looking young. I almost laughed a little at that thought, and Dad took my amusement for a sign of misgivings.

"It's really not that bad," he was quick to assure me. "His son, Jake, you know him, too, helped him tune her right up for you. Says she runs like a dream. Sure, the outside might be a bit banged up, but the engine's practically as good as new." This was a mouthful for him; he really was worried I was upset with him. "No, Dad, I bet it's great. I'm just a little overwhelmed. I didn't think I'd be getting a car this fast. Thanks." He must have known how much it meant to me, being able to have my own car up here. He could have stalled me getting one to make sure I didn't drive that car right out of Washington and never look back. He flushed red and kept his eyes on the road, not saying a word.

"So… how much is he selling it for?" I cautiously asked. I didn't want to seem rude, but while I'd been saving for a car for the past year, I didn't exactly have a fortune from part time jobs and babysitting. "I already bought it, Bells," he admitted. "Think of it as… a homecoming gift. Or an early birthday present."

"Dad." I was even more stunned now. "I have the money; I could have paid for it myself or have even paid half…"

"I wanted you to have this," he cut me off. "I want you to be happy here." I gave him a small, shy smile and his eyes were warm when they looked back at me. "Though just so you know, Dad… My birthday's not until September," I couldn't resist pointing out a little cheekily. I got a laugh out of him with that. "I know, Bella."

With that out of the way, not much else was said until we reached Forks. I tried to doze in the car, though I shouldn't have, since I knew that would mean I'd have trouble getting to sleep that night. I was relieved that as we passed into town limits, my clothes and hair were for the most part dry. My hair was still a bit damp because of how thick it was, and my shoes were still wet, but at least I wasn't dripping. It comforted me when faced with the vast green expanse that was a blur outside my window because of the rain.

But as we neared Dad's neighborhood the weather seemed to lighten a little. The rain wasn't coming down quite as fast or heavy, slowing to a drizzle outside. I could see out the window a bit more clearly. Nothing had changed since I'd last been to Forks. I recognized every major landmark, every business, even a few of the houses. The only thing different was about Forks was going to be my presence, it seemed.

There were just so many _trees_, I realized as we pulled onto Dad's street. Big ones, too, covered in moss. I'd forgotten how big they could get. And there were so many ferns and bushes as well. Well, at least I'd have a backyard living at Charlie's. For such a small, cramped little house, which was in reality more like a cabin than anything else, he did have a nice piece of property. No nosy neighbors right on top of us. The lawn was a little overgrown, the driveway needed repaving, and the porch swing looked like it was on its last legs. But this was home until I graduated, so I might as well get used to it.

"And there's your truck," Dad commented as we turned into the driveway. "Billy must have had Jacob drive it over."

I remembered now that Jacob was Billy's son, and I doubted he was old enough for a license yet, but I let it go. Things were different in Forks. Plenty of people took their sons and daughters fishing before they were in kindergarten, and hunting before they were in middle school. And the reservation was entirely separate territory. They were on fairly good terms with the people of Forks, it being the only nearby town, but Dad had said once that they gave La Push its space.

The truck was parked on the street next to the driveway. I couldn't get a good look at it in the cruiser, so I jumped out as soon as the engine was off and approached it warily. It was red, but the paint was faded into a more neutral shade of the color, and it looked like something you'd see on the set of an old movie from the seventies or eighties. It wasn't as big as I'd thought it might be, and I was glad. No need to draw even more attention to myself with a monster of a truck. It was sort of cute, in a round-ish old car way, and it looked sturdy, too, like it could withstand almost anything.

"You like it?" a slightly anxious voice asked gruffly. I hadn't even noticed Dad lingering behind me in the drizzling rain. I nodded and smiled despite, the rain getting in my eyes. "Yeah, I do." He seemed pleased. "Alright then, come on inside." He held the front door for me while I lugged all my things inside and up the rickety stairs that groaned and creaked under my unfamiliar weight. I was staying in the bedroom I'd always stayed in, the room I slept in as an infant.

The floor was old wood and the walls were pale blue. Mom claimed this was because they'd been sure I'd be a boy when they were getting it ready for my arrival into the world, but I'd never minded. I looked better in cooler colors anyways. The ceiling peaked up like that of an attic, and I had to bow my head a little in some tight corners, but for the most part I was short enough for it to work out okay. The curtains around the one window overlooking the front yard were still that ancient lace, now yellowing with age.

The rocking chair my mom had rocked me in when I came home from the hospital was still in the corner by the window. The desk was a little smaller than I remembered, and the old computer even older. I didn't mind that much; I'd only really be using it to email Mom and maybe to research some things for homework once I started school, which would be tomorrow.

I tried not to feel too overwhelmed as I started on settling myself into the room. Luckily, Dad didn't hang around. Mom would have hovered and fretted over everything and added to my discomfort. He wandered off instead. I unpacked my precious books first. My Jane Austen novels took the honor of the top shelf of the small bookcase, which I quickly discovered was not going to fit all my books. In addition to the Jane Austen's I had _Little Women_ and its sequels, the _Little House _books, the ongoing _Harry Potter_ series- I was eagerly awaiting the release of the sixth book this coming summer-, _The Hobbit_ and _The Lord of the Rings _trilogy, and the _Anne of Green Gables_ series, among others. I had a sizable collection of Shakespeare's more famous plays, one or two books of poetry, and even a few old story books I had adored when I was small.

Next came my clothes, stored away in the tiny closet, my shoes shoved in at the bottom. I regretfully packed away my Arizona-weather tank tops and shorts. I tucked my toiletries into an empty drawer in the cramped bathroom across the hall. I'd be sharing it with Dad, to my displeasure. I surveyed myself in the mirror for the moment, and admitted I looked tired and worn down. Thinking about tomorrow didn't make me feel any better. My high school in Phoenix had been modern and huge, packed to the brim with students. The high school in Forks was small, had been built in the fifties, and only had three hundred fifty something students, all of whom had probably been in the same classes together since preschool. I was going to stick out whether I liked it or not, and I knew it wasn't going to be pleasant. But, I reminded myself sourly, hadn't I wanted to be paid more attention to, to be seen as someone? I definitely wouldn't go unnoticed in Forks.

I trudged out of the bathroom, wondering what to do with myself. It was only seven in the evening now; too early to sleep, but I'd already eaten dinner. I decided I might as well call it a night. Hopefully I'd wake up early and be able to get to school before everyone else tomorrow. I wanted to get a hold of my schedule and a map so I could figure out which class was where beforehand, rather than getting lost later and being forced to ask for help like a freshman. I said my good nights to Dad and spent some time actually getting all the sheets and whatnot on the bare mattress, before I was finally ready to sleep.

But just because I was ready to sleep didn't mean I did. In Phoenix, I was used to sleeping with the glow of streetlights creeping into my room and the constant hum of traffic outside. In Forks there were very few street lights, and certainly none in Dad's neighborhood. The only noise was the sound of the rain picking up and dying down, and the sound of the wind buffeting the sides of the house. This ensured that it took me a good two hours to fall asleep, and even then I slept fitfully, occasionally half waking up before rolling over and trying to muffle the foreign sounds with my pillow.

I awoke far too early, to the sound of rain drizzling on the window pane. I plodded over to the window and squinted at the thick blanket of fog covering everything outside. Great, rain _and_ fog. It was almost eerily white outside, too surreal for me to handle this early in the morning. I took a piping hot shower in the hopes that it would warm me up, but I still shivered as I dressed, and I spent as long as possible in the temporarily warm bathroom, brushing my teeth and doing my hair. I didn't bother with makeup- I never had before, and I felt any attempts to dress to impress would be fruitless.

I checked and double checked I had everything I'd need for my first day of school, and paced around my room before I heard Dad downstairs in the kitchen making coffee. I trooped downstairs to join him then, jacket in one hand, backpack in the other. We were both quick eaters who weren't ones to talk much over meals, so breakfast was short. He actually finished before me, and took his leave after wishing me a good first day of school. I shoved more cereal in my mouth so I wouldn't have to respond to that. While I wasn't dramatic enough to think my first day would be 'teen movie horrible', I doubted it would be very _good_, either. The most I could hope for was to go unnoticed, and with the size of this town, even that wasn't very likely.

When I finished my cereal I washed my dishes out and left them in the sink. I still wasn't used to being in this kitchen again yet, with the sunny yellow cabinets my mom had painted in the vain hope of bringing some light into the room, once upon a time, the wood paneled walls that made me feel like I was in a box, the cracked and aged linoleum tiles on the floor. The kitchen in the condo in Arizona had been as small as this, true, but it also had a sliding glass door leading out onto the tiny patio out back, and there was always sunlight streaming through them. It was always warm. I stared at the yellow cabinets here in Washington and felt cold. I put on my coat and grabbed my backpack, wandering out into the family room that the kitchen opened up into.

There was a fireplace, but I'd never actually seen a fire lit in it. I supposed Dad might light one this time of year, though. I'd always been here in the summer before, when it was slightly warmer but still frigid compared to what I was used to. There was a line of pictures on the fireplace mantel, carefully arranged in chronological order by Dad, just like how I arranged my books. First Mom and Dad in someone's back yard, at a party of some sort, arms wrapped lovingly around one another, obviously still in high school at the time by the youth of their faces and their clothes. Next their wedding picture in Vegas, their expressions giddy, tightly gripping one another's hands. Then Mom in a hospital bed, holding me, Dad crouching next to the bed, the looks on both their faces much more subdued; tired, Mom's dark hair a tangled mess coming out of a messy ponytail, Dad's clothes rumpled. There was one more picture of Mom, and that was of her sitting in my room, rocking me to sleep, her eyes on me, not the camera. Then it was just standard school pictures of me… preschool, kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, freshman year… He didn't have my sophomore photo up yet. My junior one was yet to be taken.

I cringed at my acne and braces, and ran my tongue over my now smooth teeth as if to reassure myself the horror of my early teens was long over. But what was more uncomfortable was the story the pictures told. It was a depressing one. Not for the first time, I wondered if Dad would ever get married again. I wasn't sure I'd want him to anytime soon, what with Mom having just gotten remarried herself, but… Once I was college, maybe, I wouldn't mind if he and someone from around here, someone nice and preferably his age who wouldn't bother much with me… It was just a thought.

I headed out the front door, careful to lock it behind me, and hurried down the driveway to my truck. One thing I was looking forward to this morning was getting to drive it for the first time. My rain boots squelched as I splashed right through an unusually deep puddle. Water sprinkled my jeans, but at least my feet weren't wet. I climbed into the truck- more like slipped, but I got the door shut behind me. It had clearly been cleaned out by somebody, but it still smelled like cigars, gasoline, and peppermint. Hopefully I'd eventually get used to the smell. Thank God I didn't have asthma. I was a little worried it would just stall and I'd have to walk, but the engine started up with a loud growl that made me jump. It didn't decrease in volume, either, which was annoying, but I could tolerate it. The radio worked, so I tried to drown out the sound of the engine with that. "Show me what you got, Toy Truck," I muttered, and pulled onto the street.

Everything in Forks was just off the highway that came through town, so finding the high school was no problem. But it looked nothing like any school I'd ever seen. Rather than one large building, it was a collection of smaller buildings, some linked together, some completely separate. There was no marquis, no chain link fence, no gravel. Everything was red brick. It was like I'd wandered into some strange wonderland. There were bushes and trees everywhere, and close to the buildings, practically on top of them.

I parked in front of the building which seemed to be the main office of sorts. The parking lot was mostly deserted- the buses didn't seem to have come in yet, and there were only a few other cars. I debated just waiting in the truck until more people showed up, but thought better of it. The office was likely to be jam packed as soon as the school day officially started, and the last thing I needed was to be waiting in line just to get my schedule and some directions. I sighed, turned off the ignition, and slid out of the warm truck and back out into the cold, wet world. I scuttled to the door of the office, and a bell chimed absurdly loudly as I entered, pulling my hood back. It was so bright inside that I flinched. There was a faded clock on the back wall ticking slowly. I scuffed my boots a bit on the dull carpet as I approached the desk. There were potted plants, both fake and real, everywhere. It was like being inside a greenhouse. The woman behind the desk looked up from her trashy romance novel to regard me curiously from behind her glasses. She had frizzy red hair and was wearing a tee shirt. Now I felt overdressed.

She looked me over, before inquiring, "How can I help you, sweetheart?"

"I'm Bella Swan… I was supposed to come here to get my schedule," I said lamely, uncomfortable as I watched her eyes light up with the knowledge of whom I was. "Chief Swan's daughter," she affirmed with an open smile. "Good to have you back in town, hon." She dug around in some files before coming up with the paper that was my schedule. Glancing it over, it didn't seem too terrible. "Could I have a map, too?" I asked hesitantly. The secretary frowned. "Oh, I don't think there's any left from the start of the year- those freshman pounced on them, at least the ones without an older sibling to show them around. I can draw you one, though, hold on."

Great. Now I was going to have to decipher a hand drawn map, too. My heart sunk but I kept my expression calm as I waited. She scribbled one on a piece of scrap paper, before handing it over to me. It was rough, but I could sort of make out the buildings and what classes seemed to be where. "Thanks," I said quickly, and folded all the papers neatly to put in my pocket. Otherwise they'd be soaked the moment I stepped back outside.

Back in the parking lot, the first buses were pulling in to the front of the school, and there were a couple more cars. Luckily, pretty much everyone's car seemed to be as beat up as mine, if not as old, except one gleaming silver Volvo that was pulling in now. There was one rich family ready to flaunt their wealth in every town, I guess.

I climbed back into the truck to pore over my schedule and the map more for the next ten minutes, until all the buses seemed to be here, unloading crowds of students. I'd memorized my route on the map as best I could; I just hoped I wouldn't be overwhelmed by the crowd and get turned around. _First class is English in Building Three, Room 307_, I chanted to myself over and over again as I joined the students on the sidewalk, head down. I edged around the influx of students pouring into the building that housed the cafeteria- it seemed like a popular pre-classes hangout area, along with the gymnasium, which was getting similar traffic. I was relieved to spot Building Three, easily identified by the "3" painted the doors. I got more and more nervous as I entered, but no one was staring at me yet, and I seemed to blend in pretty well. Nearly everyone was as pale as me, and there were plenty of thin brunettes in rain jackets.

The classrooms all seemed to be small, with a row of windows looking out onto towering bushes on one side. There weren't even dry-erase boards; they were still using blackboards with chalk. The desks looked like they had seen better days, and most of the chairs were mismatched. It was a far cry from my old high school, where everything was new, high tech, and modern. There was a row of hooks like the ones they put up in elementary schools to hang coats and backpacks from. I copied two other girls by hanging up my coat but taking my bag with me. I wanted to sit, preferably in a back corner by the window, but I was going to have to let the teacher know I was the new student, and I didn't know if people already had assigned seats. I reluctantly approached the teacher, Mr. Mason, and introduced myself as Bella Swan. He gave me a searching look, nodded briefly, and told me to sit wherever I liked after handing me a reading list. I took my preferred seat in the back as I skimmed the list. I'd read almost everything on it at one point or another, but I was going to have to reread the majority of it again if I wanted to do well on my assignments. The class went by very fast; I wondered if first period was shorter than the rest or it was just me. People continuously talked among themselves and turned around to gawk at me throughout it. I grew redder and redder and tried not to be paranoid.

The bell ringing was my salvation. I practically leaped out of my seat, and tripped into a desk as a result, which made a god awful screeching sound against the floor. I steadied myself on the desk, face now on fire, ignoring the few snickers from the students trickling out the door.

"Almost had a wipe out there," a male voice snickered. I glanced over with narrowed brown eyes to see a gangly boy with limbs like a spider extracting himself from a far too small for him desk. His hair was jet back and slicked back with a copious amount of gel. He appeared to be in need of a good acne cream- I sympathized, but not enough to volunteer my personal recommendations within seconds of meeting him. By his clothes, I judged chess club dork. They'd been just below me on the social ladder in Phoenix. I was a "cool" nerd because I dressed well and didn't talk too much about my interests in the presence of those more popular. I thought of it as common sense. I'd managed to get through the majority of my school years with very little bullying or harassment, and keeping my head down and my mouth shut was the reason why.

"Isabella Swan, right?" he asked with a bit of a smirk. I debated glaring but settled for a moderately curt, "It's Bella."

He looked a little taken aback but far from knocked off his game. "So where's your next class, _Bella_?" He'd gone from obnoxious to smarmy. I was not in the mood. I straightened up and grabbed my backpack. "Government with Jefferson," I intoned coolly. "You know where it is?" He sounded both eager and doubtful. "Building Six," I assured him, winding my way through the desks to where my coat was.

"I'm headed to Building Four, I could show you… I'm Eric."

I was tempted to completely shut this little 'flirt with the new girl possibly in my league' operation down, but I _did_ have a heart. Eric was annoying, sure, but seemed harmless. And I didn't need a reputation as The New Bitch from Arizona. "Alright," I shrugged noncommittally. "Thanks for offering." He grinned. He did have okay teeth, and he looked better when he actually smiled. "No problem. My family moved here when I was in middle school; being new in Forks _sucks_." Ah, a kindred spirit. Maybe Eric wasn't so bad. I put my jacket back on and we made our way out into the continuing rain. I was fairly sure the people around us were trying their best to shamelessly eavesdrop, but there was nothing I could do about it but keep my voice down.

"So everyone's saying you moved here from down south, like Nevada or something," he commented as we passed the gym. "Arizona," I corrected. "I used to visit here in the summers when I was younger." I had no idea what to say in regard to why I'd stopped without being offensive. "And stopped because Forks is like a rainy purgatory?" he laughed. "Yeah. I'd get the hell out of here too if I could."

I bit my lower lip to keep from snickering myself. "There's always college," I muttered.

"MIT, here I come," he said dryly. I couldn't tell if he was joking or not, but he brought the subject back to Arizona. "You don't look much like an… Arizona girl." He looked me up and down very obviously. I rolled my eyes as subtly as possible. "You're confusing it with California," I snarked. "We're the Grand Canyon State, not the Golden State."

"Haha. Does it ever rain there?"

"Maybe three or four times a year," I said dully. We were walking around the side of the cafeteria now, and the crowd was luckily a bit thinner. I could see Building Six up ahead. "There it is," I spoke up, loud enough for him to hear. "Nice walking with you, Eric." My opinion of him was slightly improved- at least he had a sense of humor, but I was glad to be off to Government.

"Sure, anytime, Bella!" he called after me much louder than he needed to, probably to impress a few other boys coming in the opposite direction. Their faces were surprised, to say that much. I shook my head a little in annoyance, and made my way into Building Six.

The rest of the morning was quietly uneventful. I got plenty of stares and some whispers, but no direct questions, except when I was called on in Trig to introduce myself in front of the whole class. It was a train wreck. I spoke too quickly, had to repeat that I wanted to be called 'Bella' twice, and the sharp corner of Mr. Varner's desk caught me in the thigh on my way to my seat. Fortunately, I started to recognize familiar faces by fourth period. The only name I knew was Eric, and then Jessica, who was short and curvy with a head of wild dark curls and bright blue eyes. She was a chatterbox, which I liked, because that meant I didn't have to talk much _and_ she was more than happy to show me where the rest of my classes were once the ink drawn map was completely destroyed due to the rain. I didn't really mourn its loss. Jessica was less grating than Eric, clearly more socially accepted, and told me I was welcome to sit with her and her friends at lunch. Being part of a crowd might make me go more unnoticed, and if I could make some friends off the bat, it'd be even better.

I tagged along with her to the cafeteria, and we sat at the end of a packed table. I was practically sitting on the floor, and it wasn't exactly relaxing, but at least I had a seat at the table. Literally. There was an outright assault of curious questions and forced friendliness- not that I suspected they weren't usually this amicable, but they were clearly censoring and monitoring themselves so as not to inadvertently scare me off. It was overwhelming, but I managed to avoid a lot of questions simply by having my mouth full. Eric waved from across the cafeteria, on line to get food, and was immediately shoved out of the way by a hulking classmate.

I politely averted my gaze and looked away. It was then that I saw the highest rung of the social ladder, the A-list, the top dogs of this tiny school. You could have spotted them a mile away. They were dressed expensively, but decidedly un-flashy and modest. Well provided for, clearly, even spoiled, but not wanting to show it, at least not outright. Desperate to fit in. They looked like a family to me, even if none of them looked all that similar.

There were three boys, and two girls. One boy was _big_, football linebacker big; short shorn curls and serious muscles, a cocky look on his face. The typical dumb jock, I assumed. He wasn't really "handsome", and definitely not my type, but he wasn't ugly, either. Another was taller and leaner, more along the build of a swimmer, dirty blond, wavy hair and sharper features, a small smile turning up one corner of his mouth. He was much more handsome than the stockier boy, in a more 1950s All American Boy way. The third boy was the smallest and the youngest looking, still lanky and in the middle of a growth spurt, with messy reddish brown hair and a more youthful face of wider eyes and a smaller mouth and nose.

The two girls were polar opposites. One was tall, with the much envied hourglass waist and sizable breasts, as well as wavy blonde hair, much like the tall boy, except her hair color was lighter; more of a platinum blonde, ending halfway down her back. Her lips were red and full, yet she seemed to be wearing very little makeup. The other girl was short, _very_ short, probably below five feet, with angular features where the other girl's were full. Her hair was pitch black, in a pixie cut, and stuck up all over the place as if full of static energy. Her makeup was much more visible than the blonde, almost gothic in appearance, and she seemed to be the most eccentric looking of the bunch. She wasn't what you could call pretty; certainly not classically beautiful like the other girl, but she was eye catching, and might even have been cute in a darkly cherubic sort of way if she wasn't so thin. She reminded me of a small crow, while the blond boy and girl, who might have been twins or siblings, were like a pair of golden lions. The bigger boy was akin to a bear, the smaller boy like a fox.

It was a regular menagerie, and you could tell, despite their differences, that they were the elite of Forks. They stayed apart from the rest, but still close enough to occasionally call things over to other tables, sometimes getting silence, other times responses. Opinions on them, from the looks on the faces of the people closest, seemed to differ. The blonde girl got a lot of envious looks and lust filled stares, but had the 'rising above it all' queen bee persona, and seemed to have a few girlfriends sitting nearby she occasionally slipped over to talk with. The tiny girl greeted everyone who passed by, and seemed to be very well liked by virtually every clique, though I was noticing that Forks had nothing in terms of cliques on my old school. It was practically all inclusive compared to Phoenix.

The blond boy was quiet and shy, though he chatted amiably with the auburn haired boy and didn't seem to have any enemies, if not many close friends either. The brunet boy was loud and raucous and seemed to be buddies with most of the athletes, and also, shockingly, what appeared to be the student council. The auburn haired boy didn't seem as withdrawn as the blond boy, but was still very restrained; he didn't grin or laugh as much as the brunet boy or the tiny girl. He did look like he knew a lot of the 'intellectuals', though, from the nods he gave them. But all of them as a whole still got their share of eye rolls and dirty looks. Definitely the upper class of high school. Half of the school seemed quite fond of them, the other half torn between jealousy and dislike.

I paid such close attention to them because they were obviously the highest echelon of the student body, and I needed to know them in order to more efficiently stay out of their way. That had been easy enough in Phoenix, but here, where everyone knew everyone by first name if not last, it would be a lot harder. Still, this bunch seemed extremely close, even for good friend. I tore my gaze away as the tiny dark haired girl got up to empty her tray.

"That's the Cullens for you," Jessica said from beside me, her tone much more subdued than usual. "They're one family?" I asked, figuring it was high time I got to ask some questions of my own.

"Yep- adopted, all of them. The only ones who're real siblings are Jasper and Rosalie; everyone calls her Rose; their last name is actually Hale- they're the blonde ones, you know, twins. Emmett is the giant, Ed- Edward is the redhead, and Alice is the one with the pixie cut," she rattled off in quick succession. "Their dad's a doctor at the hospital, and their mom's a designer or something like that. Tons of money. They moved here a few years ago." I glanced back the way of the Cullens, glad to have names for all of them now. As I looked, Rose and Emmett shared a deep, lingering kiss across the table. A few girls nearby giggled shrilly, and one boy whooped. "Oh," I said faintly.

"Yeah," Jessica confirmed with an enthusiastic bob of her head, curls flying everywhere. "They're together. Like _that_. So are Alice and Jasper. It's pretty weird, but the Cullens don't give a shit. I think they like being weird." She sounded excited by the drama of the whole thing. I liked to think that not much shocked me, but even in a big city like Phoenix, adopted siblings in relationships with one another would have turned heads and made fingers point. It probably added to their intrigue here, at least for their fellow teens. The adults of the town probably thought of them as bad influences. Good. There'd be no room left for me to be one. I was tame and meek as a mouse compared to these wild creatures.

I studied Jessica for a moment, trying to determine her opinion of the Cullens. She certainly enjoyed talking about them, but it seemed like most people did. The entire table had latched onto our topic and were now chatting about the family. They'd barely needed an excuse to.

"Where did they move here from?" I asked, raising my voice to be heard above the din.

"Alaska," she replied, finishing the last of her yogurt cup.

I took another slow bite of my apple. "So… how well do you know them?" Maybe she'd let slip her feelings on them now.

She flushed pink. "Oh… not that well. I mean, Ed's in our grade, so I've talked to him before, of course." By her tone, it sounded like she'd wanted to do more than talk to him at one point or another. Definitely a crush there, though I wasn't sure if she was still head over heels or not. "So is Alice," she was quick to add, recovering fast. "And she's really sweet. A little crazy… but sweet. Rose acts super above it all. She's not really bitchy, but you probably don't want to get on her bad side. Jasper's super, super shy; he really only talks to Alice. And Emmett's a douche, but he pretends to be dumber than he really is."

I ended up spending much longer in the cafeteria than I ever had in my entire high school career. It was hard to escape from a table where, after talk of the Cullens finally faded, I remained the center of attention. Polite attention, maybe, but it was still more attention from people my own age than I'd ever received before. I didn't know what to do with any of it.

My next class was Biology II, which I had with one of the other girl's from the lunch table, Angela. Whereas I was withdrawn and reserved, Angela was painfully shy, speaking barely above a whisper at all times. She only spoke up slightly to remind me of her name, when I struggled to remember it out of all the names I'd learned over the course of lunch. We walked together in silence, and I felt dwarfed by her impressive height of what had to be about 5'10", 5'11", if not taller.

The classroom was set up like the typical science lab, and nearly every table was filled with two people. Except one. Edward Cullen was instantly recognizable by his vibrant hair alone, taking out his notebook and pen. Angela took her seat in the front of the room, leaving me to my own devices.

The teacher's desk was in a corner in the back of the room, by the supply cabinets. I had to walk down the aisle of lab tables to get to it, and as I passed Edward he stiffened in his seat in a sudden jolt of movement. I slowed my pace to glance curiously at him, but he wasn't looking at me, but instead at his notebook as if it had personally offended him. Wondering what had just happened that I clearly hadn't seen, I looked away, and almost tripped myself up on someone's backpack sticking out from under one of the tables.

The teacher, Mr. Banner, was stern and no nonsense about giving me my textbook and telling me exactly where to sit- with one Mr. Cullen, as he called him. "I expect you two to work," he told me seriously. "You have a lot of catching up to do, Miss Swan. No chit chat." I nodded meekly and hurried to my seat next to Edward, textbook in hand. I pulled out a binder full of loose leaf paper and a pencil, arranging my things neatly so as not to take up too much space. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Edward carefully rearrange himself in his seat, straightening up, rigid against the back of the chair, legs shifting to lock together rather than sprawl out under the table, leaning ever so slightly away from my general direction, as if to somehow block me out.

I flushed. I wasn't being that obnoxious, was I? I sat on the edge of my seat myself, and tried to keep to my side of the table and not stare at him. I angled myself so my hair fell in between me and him, and focused on Mr. Banner. He needn't have worried about me catching up- I'd already studied what he was lecturing about. I took halfhearted notes, anyways, not wanting to look lazy, but I was bored. Consequently, I snuck more looks at my table mate than I should have, wondering when he was going to relax already. It irked me- he acted like I was this huge inconvenience from his body language, but he wouldn't so much as look at me himself. Maybe he was too shy to say anything, but he obviously wasn't too shy so as to not show his annoyance.

I tried to remember what Jessica had said about him at lunch? Was he overly sensitive? But all I'd gotten from her was that she thought he was attractive and was or had been crushing on him. He definitely wasn't _unattractive_, but I didn't know if you could call him handsome, either. He'd seemed to be friendly on some level, so I really didn't know what his problem with me was, unless he'd just been really fond of sitting by himself and was now upset he'd have to share the table. That seemed pretty immature if you asked me, I though snottily, but to each their own.

I was so busy stewing that the rest of the class time flew by, and I was startled when the bell rang. While I packed up my things, he was one of the first out of the classroom.

Angela hovered near me nervously as I pushed in my chair with a frown, and only then did I notice the boy beside her, whom I recognized from lunch. He'd been at our table, but not with us, specifically. He was cute in terms of appearance, though his pale, almost white blond hair had way too much gel in it, in my opinion. He grinned at me, and I tentatively smiled back.

"I'm Mike," he said enthusiastically. "Angela says you're Bella, right, the new girl?"

"Yep." I adjusted my backpack on my shoulder, looking at Angela, who managed a small smile. "My next class is all the way in the computer lab, so I have to go," she explained quietly. "See you later, Mike, Bella."

"Well, I have gym next," I told him as she left. He brightened. "Me too."

Mike was easy to talk to, and quickly put me at ease with his steady, comfortable way of speaking. Appearance wise he reminded me of boys I'd known in Phoenix, but it was very clear he was not a city kid. He was naive, eager about almost everything, and nice. Really nice. The type of guy who'd hold an umbrella for someone standing in the rain, who probably helped his mom put away the groceries and threw around a football with his younger siblings whenever they wanted.

The only thing in our conversation that made me remotely uncomfortable was when he joked, as we entered the gymnasium, "You run over Ed Cullen's dog this morning? He looked ready to kill someone all last period." I winced, and acted like I had no idea what he was talking about. "He did? Oh… I didn't really see, I was taking notes."

Mike shrugged. "It's probably no big deal. He can be a pretty weird guy sometimes, so I bet it wasn't you. Sometimes the Cullens are like that," he snickered. "Moody."

I nodded uneasily and almost ran into the girl's locker room, though I was relieved. Maybe it was just that; he'd abruptly started on his man period that class, and I had to bear the brunt of it.

I'd brought gym clothes, but I didn't tell my PE teacher Coach Clapp that and he didn't make me change. My class was playing volleyball, to my horror. I hated volleyball. I hated sports, in general. The last time I'd played volleyball had been in middle school, and that had ended with a bloody nose and a very pissed off team. I hung back near the bleachers and managed to stay out of everyone's way while Mike arched the ball over the net time after time.

The only class I had after PE was American History, which I actively enjoyed, and then the school day was over. It had passed far quicker than I expected it to, and it hadn't been as awful as I thought it would have been, either. Though people kept staring at me and talking about me, at least they (probably) didn't have anything bad to say yet. I'd sort of made friends- Jessica, Angela, and Mike had all seemed to actually like me. I had only gotten lost once, trying to find the bathroom. I couldn't say I really liked the school, itself, but I vaguely knew my way around now, and at least driving to school and back home was very simple.

I briskly made my way out to my truck, pulling on my jacket and bracing myself for the cold wind outside. I passed the main office on my way, and as someone was exiting the building when I walked by, I caught a glimpse of the inside as the door swung all the way open. The boy at the receptionist's desk, who appeared to be arguing with her about something, was Edward Cullen. I stopped and stared for a moment, wondering what in the world he could be debating with her over, when he seemed to give up and abruptly turned around. I bolted to the Toy Truck, unsure if he knew who I was from the back, and didn't look over my shoulder to see for myself.

I felt stupid once inside the truck. I was sixteen, not six and pretending to be Harriet the Spy. I stared out the windshield for a minute or two, reflecting on my day, before I realized I needed to beat the rush out of the school parking lot and put the truck into gear, pulling out of my space. I cruised home to Dad's place, already thinking about the mountain of homework I'd been assigned, and whether things would be any less awkward tomorrow.

_I thought I was ready to write, but you had me years ago... You had me at first sight, even if it means nothing now._

_\- The Devil Wears Prada, 'First Sight'_


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

I DIDN'T GET MUCH SLEEP my second night in Forks. I blamed the wind and the rain once again, and when I woke up, while it wasn't raining yet, thank God, the clouds were as thick and heavy as usual. I was tired and grumpy through breakfast- Dad took note and made a quick escape while I almost fell asleep into my cereal. I got to school a bit later than the day before, but I was somewhat calmer, seeing as I knew what to expect now.

Mike, as it turned out, was in my English class. He sat next to me, and though I still got my share of stares, I didn't get half as many as the day before. Mr. Varner called on me in Trig, despite my hand not being raised, and made the entire class watch me try to guesstimate an answer that was, of course, completely wrong.

At lunch I sat with the same people once again, and with Jess on my right and Mike on my left, seemed to have been accorded some sort of seat on honor with the crowd at the table. I knew it was only because Jessica, who insisted I call her Jess after I called her by her full name for the thirtieth time, had taken an instant liking to me, for who knew what reason, and Mike just seemed like a sweet guy in general, but it still felt nice; like I was appreciated already.

I was peppered with fewer questions during the lunch period, which was also nice, since it let me listen in. Mike and Jess continuously leaned across me to tell each other things, and while it was annoying, I was pretty sure Mike had a serious crush on Jess, who seemed cheerfully oblivious for now. It was none of my business, so I kept my head down and ate my lunch in grateful undisturbed silence. When the bell rang I walked to Bio with Angela and Mike. Angela barely said anything, and Mike couldn't seem to talking about a trip to the beach he was trying to rally people up to go on. I'd been to the beaches around here before. Golden sand and palm trees they were not. But I didn't want to be rude, so I kept neutral, and left the possibility of me going an open-ended 'yeah, maybe'.

As I headed to my lab table, I realized a certain redhead was absent. Edward Cullen was nowhere to be seen, and the warning bell was already ringing. I doubted he was the type to saunter in late. He'd seemed the most scholarly (read, geeky) of his siblings. I tried to remember if I'd seen him at all in the lunch room as Mr. Banner started the lesson, but I couldn't remember. I hadn't even been able to see the Cullens at their usual table from where I'd sat today.

Truth be told, I was a little relieved to be all by myself. I'd been bothered by his demeanor yesterday, and it was nice to not have to feel so awkward and uneasy with him not there to act like a freak. Maybe he was out sick- could he have been coming down with something yesterday? So long as he acted normal- whatever normal was for him- tomorrow, I didn't really care. Biology was proving be to be easy for me so far, since we were still on material I'd already learned.

In the gym we were playing volleyball again, and this time I was forced to change and put on the 'shirts' team, which meant I had to wear a far too small, nylon jersey, and pretend I knew how to properly spike a ball over the net. I managed to hit someone on my own team in the head, a sophomore who proceeded to look terrified of me and my terrible spiking skills for the rest of the game. I heard people snickering about it in the locker room, and was bright red as I changed back into my jeans and sweater.

American History was interesting, but the last class of my day, so I found myself constantly looking at the clock above the blackboard, until the final bell was ringing. I needed to go food shopping after school, since Dad was incapable of cooking himself or me anything other than pasta, eggs and bacon, or hamburgers or hot dogs out on the tiny grill outside the house, and the way things were in Forks, that wouldn't be an option until July. This morning before I left I'd rooted around in the kitchen cupboard until I found the jar containing the money Dad had set aside for food, and I fully intended on buying a month's worth of groceries with it.

As I left the parking lot I spotted the Cullens who _were_ here today getting in a familiar looking Volvo- it figured that was their car, though I was surprised they all shared one. The blonde girl, Rose, seemed to be driving, with the big boy, Emmett next to her in the front passenger seat, and the tall Jasper and the tiny Alice clambering into the back. They stared at the Toy Truck as I rumbled past. I turned up 'Beverly Hills', which was blasting on the radio, a tiny bit louder, and was on my way.

_Where I come from isn't all that great; my automobile is a piece of crap, my fashion sense is a little whack, and my friends are just as screwy as me_…

The local supermarket, the Thriftway, was only a few blocks away from the school. I didn't feel weird in there with all the little old ladies and haggard mothers; I had been doing the shopping for Mom and myself for a while back in Phoenix, and even before that Mom had mostly just pushed the cart while I sorted through our coupons and made sure we had everything we needed. Too many times had Mom absentmindedly forgotten something like milk and eggs, only for us to have to run back out as soon as were done putting the groceries away at home. The only thing that was strange about this was that I wasn't sure what Dad would eat or wouldn't eat, so I tried to stay safe with generic, store brand stuff, and since it was his money I was spending, stayed away from the tempting, fattening crap lining the checkout aisles.

When I came out of the store a half hour later it was raining, and I raced to the truck with the cart, shoving all the groceries in hurriedly, and hoping I didn't damage anything. I pushed the cart randomly towards the corral, and hopped in the truck before I got any more soaked. At home I had to do two runs to get all the groceries in, slipping and sliding in the muddy, wet grass the second time, and by the time I had everything put away decided I was in real need of a hot shower. Afterwards, as I pulled back my wet hair into a limp ponytail, I checked my email. There were three new messages from Mom.

Bella,

Write me as soon as you get there! How were your flights? Is it raining? (It probably is, haha) I miss you already! Phil says hi!

Love, Mom.

The next was eight hours later.

Bella,

Did you get my email? Write me back please!

Love, Mom.

The final email was from this morning.

Isabella Marie Swan,

If I haven't heard from you by 5:30 p.m. today I'm calling your dad.

Love, YOUR MOTHER

I rolled my eyes. Typical Mom move, threatening to call Dad. She knew my weaknesses. I checked the time on the computer. It was only three, but Mom was impatient. I fired a quick email off first.

Mom, calm down! I'm writing you right now. Don't call Dad!

Once that was sent, I started on another.

Hi Mom,

The flights were okay. I got a lot of reading done. Yes, it's raining. I was waiting for something _other_ than rain to write you about. School's good. I like my classes and I already made some friends. Dad bought me a truck! How cool is that? I love it, even if it's really old. I miss you too. I'll email you once a week or so, okay? Just relax. Everything's fine here. I love you. Tell Phil I said hi back, and good luck in Florida.

Love, Bella.

I stood up from the desk, working out the tension in my shoulders, wondering what to do now. It seemed a bit early for homework… but it was either that, read, or watch television. I compromised and finished reading _Macbeth_, the assigned reading for this semester. The last time I'd read it had been in eighth grade, for fun, after all, and back then I had barely understood what was going on in it. It was a much clearer read for me now, and I found it more engrossing than I had when I was thirteen.

I was so caught up in it I barely heard the front door unlocking downstairs- it was until Dad called out my name that I realized he was home.

"Bella?"

"Coming!" I yelled, carefully marking my place and coming downstairs. "Hi Dad- I went grocery shopping after school today."

Noting his look of confusion, I clarified. "With the food money. I know I didn't ask, but there was nothing to eat, so…"

He stared at me for a moment, and then nodded. "You should have let me know, Bells, but show me what you bought."

Though it was barely a reprimand, I flushed red. I honestly hadn't thought he'd mind, and I was so used to just _doing_ things when I wanted to, not having to really ask or even notify anyone. I opened up all the cabinets and let him see, and to my relief he didn't seem that annoyed, mostly surprised.

"I haven't had this much stuff in the house in a long time. I guess I should have done this myself before you came…"

I was staring at the cracked linoleum floor and the horrific amount of mud he'd just tracked in.

"Shi- shoot," Dad said, apparently still not considering me old enough to curse in front of. "Let me get these off and clean that up. Did you want to cook something? You've always seemed to know what you're doing…"

"I can do steak and potatoes?" I offered hesitantly. "I bought those little frozen ones… they're really good with ketchup."

"Yeah," he called from where he was taking off his boots and hanging up his gun belt in the tiny closet by the front door. "Sounds good."

I got started on that, seeing as it was now around five thirty, and by six fifteen-ish everything was done. Dad came in when he smelled steak, and helpfully set out plates and glasses and cutlery at the table, albeit awkwardly. He obviously wasn't used to having dinner with anyone but himself. The two of us ate silently, me staring out the small kitchen window and watching rain drops trickle down it, until he spoke up. "How's school going for you? Make any friends?" He cringed at his own questioning- I sensed he was flashing back to his own teen years, and the, to be blunt, somewhat stupid questions adults adored asking.

"Uh, fine, and, yeah, I guess. Mike and Jess…" He probably knew them, or their parents, but I couldn't remember their last names.

Dad nodded as he chewed and swallowed a potato. "Mike Newton and Jess Stanley. I know Mike's family better; his parents run the sporting good store, sell stuff to all the hikers and campers that come through here."

I looked down at my plate, picking at my steak. "Um, do you know the Cullens? They seem pretty popular at school." Now that I thought about it, _popular_ probably wasn't the right word. But neither was 'infamous' or 'notorious'- they weren't bank robbers.

"Dr. Cullen," he said instantly. "Great guy- always smiling. And his wife's a nice lady, always asking about the local charities, and how she can give back to the community…" His face momentarily darkened. "I'm glad those kids seem to fit in at school. When they first moved here…you would have thought it was a goddamn invasion from outer space, the way people acted- sorry, Bells."

"It's fine," I said quickly. Rarely did Dad rant. I wanted to hear this.

"Carlisle Cullen's an excellent surgeon; he could probably be in Seattle making much more than what he gets paid here, but his wife always wanted to live in a small town. If you ask me-," Dad defiantly speared a piece of steak, "We're lucky to have him. He's a miracle worker, and those kids everyone complained about at first- said they were going to be bad influences, trouble because they were adopted or foster kids or whatever they are- well, they behave themselves more than the kids of people who've lived here for _decades_. I've never had any trouble from any of them, never, and from what I hear they're model students."

I hadn't heard him say this much about one subject in a long time. I exhaled slowly. "…Yeah. One of them's in my Biology class- his name is Edward."

Dad nodded but didn't say much else for the rest of dinner. He offered to do the dishes and after helping him clear the table I went upstairs, still a little stunned, to reluctantly start my homework. As soon as I was done I could feel myself starting to doze off already, and I was asleep the moment my head hit the pillow, sleeping straight through the night for the first time since arriving in Forks.

Wednesday was close to normal, as was Thursday, as I settled into a routine. I knew all my classes, and how to get to them, by Friday. I could name everyone in all my classes by then as well, and recognized everyone in my grade whenever I encountered them, in or out of school. I stayed out of everyone's way in volleyball, and they all learned to back up fast when it was my turn to spike.

Edward wasn't in school Wednesday, or Thursday, but I saw him in the cafeteria with his siblings on Friday. I expected to see him in Bio right afterwards, but he wasn't there. He was either in the nurse's office, in some sort of trouble, or skipping. I figured whatever he'd been sick with must have made a comeback, and went on with my life, glad it was almost the weekend.

Dad worked most of it, and I stayed inside. On Saturday I cleaned my room from top to bottom after finding one cobweb in a corner by my bed, and wrote my mom a pack of lies about how much I'd enjoyed my first week in Forks. I tried not to overdo it- I only used one smiley face. On Sunday I drove the two minutes to the library, and found it tiny, poorly lit, and not very well stocked. Oh boy. I was going to have to go to Port Angeles, or maybe even Seattle or Olympia to find a decent bookstore.

It rained for most of the weekend, but very lightly- you could barely feel it- and I slept well. On Monday morning it was frigid, but at least dry outside, the ground hard and frostbitten. People called out my name and said hi to me in the parking lot, which was incredibly weird for me, but I tried to wave back to everyone as I headed to English. There was a pop quiz, but it was multiple choice with only one short answer at the end, and pretty easy.

The wind had picked up during first period, and I stood completely still, shocked, when I realized it was snowing all around me outside. Mike laughed at my reaction, as did a few other people, but I ignored them. I'd never seen snow in real life before. It was fatter and wetter than I'd expected.

"Cool, right?" Mike asked eagerly.

I nodded lamely, and then gaped as a snowball hit him in the side of the head. He looked around frantically to try to see who'd hit him, and I darted off, sensing a brewing snow massacre. I had no urge to be pummeled with freezing cold wet stuff, as pretty as it was. The snow was all anyone could talk about all morning- even me. I wasn't the only one thrilled to be temporarily done with rain. The Great Snowball War of 2005 was going on in full force by the time Jess and I were leaving Spanish. The traitor decided to lob one at me herself, but I managed to deflect it with my binder while she cackled like a hyena.

I was buying lunch today, and standing in line with Mike and Jess when I noticed Edward Cullen was back in school again. Maybe this time he'd actually make it past lunch. I hoped whatever he'd had wasn't contagious. As I sat down with a slice of a pizza, a salad, and a soda, I got a closer look at the Cullens. They must have joined in the battles outside, because they were all soaked with snow, or at least the boys were. Rose was leaning away with a grimace while Emmett shook out his dripping curls at her, and Alice was laughing herself silly, chucking a pizza crust at Jasper, who was looking slyly at her like he might do the same. Edward himself looked healthy- cheeks red, eyes bright.

I went back to my pizza.

"Ed's back in school," Jess commented. "Wonder what he was out sick with."

"Mono?" someone snickered, and she rolled her eyes. "Who would he get it from?"

"One of his sisters," someone else muttered, and there was an uproar of laughter.

I smiled a little to go along with it, but glanced over at the Cullens again. They seemed to have settled down from their giddiness, and Edward was massaging his forehead like he had a headache, though he was still grinning.

"Bella," Mike said patiently, for what was probably the hundredth time, and I blinked and took a sip of my soda, turning my attention back to my own table. "We're doing a huge snow battle in the parking lot after school. You in?"

"Ah… maybe," I fumbled for an answer. I didn't want to be drafted into Mike and Jess's growing snow army, but I didn't want to look like a stick in the mud either.

"Come on," Mike wheedled. "It's seniors versus juniors."

"And freshmen and sophomores as human shields!" Jess piped up in a darkly humorous voice. I remembered she'd mentioned having a younger brother, a freshman, in the school once; she must have been planning something along those lines for him. It sounded like it was going to be teenage chaos. I muttered something affirmative and they seemed appeased, but I secretly decided I was bolting for my truck and getting the hell out of dodge as soon as the last bell rang. A soldier I was not.

I made sure I was one of the first out of the cafeteria, Angela with me, since neither of us wanted to get caught on the crossfire between Mike and snowballs on the way to Bio. We kept our heads down and made it to the classroom in record time, though I was out of breath from jogging to keep up with Angela's swift, long strides. We were the first in the classroom, and Mr. Banner shot us grateful looks for being on time, as the rest of the class trickled in as the warning bell and late bells were ringing. We were instructed to get microscopes from the cabinets while he passed out slides, and when I returned to the table with the microscope there was Edward. He didn't make eye contact with me at first, but once I'd sat down he slowly shifted towards me with a quiet, "Hi."

"Hi," I said in surprise, a little shocked he was talking to me. His hair was dark and wet, plastered to his scalp, and he was smiling cautiously, but his eyes were very guarded and one hand was beating out a nervous tapping rhythm on the lab table surface with long, skinny fingers.

"I'm Edward Cullen- Ed," he introduced himself with a small nod. "I'm sorry I was out last week- I was sick."

"It's alright," I shrugged. "I'm fine with sitting by myself."

He stared at me for a moment, and then continued. "You're Isabella, then."

"Bella."

"Bella," he quickly corrected himself. "How do you like it here, Bella?" He sounded like a teacher. I raised an eyebrow. "It's… fine. Good. Very cold."

"The rain and snow," he agreed. "But I don't mind it."

"Well," I sort of laughed. "You are from Alaska, right?" He had to be used to the cold and dark. Edward smiled faintly. "Everyone does like to talk about us. And you. Not many newcomers in Forks. We're all conversation pieces." I nodded, and then Mr. Banner was launching into his explanation of our lab: labeling the stages of mitosis in the onion root cell slides, without checking the books to see if we were right. He wanted to come around and look at our work himself.

I'd done a variation of this lab before, so I was relieved. If my lab partner had no idea what he was doing, I could pull us (and our grade) through. Mr. Banner clapped his hands together and told us to get started. I plugged the microscope in, and when I looked back up, Edward gave a crooked, slightly queasy looking sort of grin. "Ladies first?"

I nodded, secretly pleased I was getting the first look at the first slide, and secured it in place under the microscope, switching it on and adjusting to the right objective. I took a good long look, and then declared, "Prophase." He nodded, but moved to check himself anyways. I was slightly annoyed he didn't fully trust my judgment, but pulled back from the microscope to let him look. He barely glanced at it before agreeing, "Prophase."

Glad I seemed to be right, I wrote it down on our worksheet while he switched out the first slide for the second. But this time, rather than letting me look again, he glanced at it himself, and muttered, "Anaphase."

"Can I?" I asked flatly, and he looked at me with the smallest hint of a smirk before pushing the microscope over to me. I rolled my eyes, hoping I'd catch him making a mistake, but when I looked I found that he was right. I sat back, trying to hide my disappointment, but snatched up the third slide before he could. I switched the second one out for it and took the quickest look I could manage. "Interphase," I said, and slid the microscope over to him.

He took an even tinier peek at it before writing it down. The fact that his handwriting was even neater than mine- and I prided myself on having extremely clean script- also irked me. We ended up finishing well before the rest of the class, both of us trying to outdo the other. It was a silent, unannounced competition, but a competition all the same, and it ended in a tie. I looked around the room. Everyone else was still working. A few people had books wedged open on their laps under their tables, and Mike's lab partner was arguing with him over what stage the slide they were looking at was at. Poor Angela's lab partner was busy talking to his friends, and she seemed to be doing all the work.

I glanced back at Edward. One of his hands was in a fist, like he wished he had a stress ball to squeeze to death, but his face was calm. His hair had dried into a mess, and he shifted uncomfortably, releasing the tension in his fist.

"Are you okay?" I asked slowly. He froze, and then nodded. "Fine. It's just… I have a migraine. I get them."

Before I could say anything else, Mr. Banner had come over to us, a small frown on his face. Instantly paranoid, I put my hands in my lap and skimmed our lab sheet nervously. He picked it up when he got to the table, and his frown deepened as he looked over our answers. "Edward, did you even let Isabella have a turn with the microscope?" he asked with a sigh.

"Bella," Edward corrected under his breath, then spoke up a little louder. "She identified three out of five, Mr. Banner."

Mr. Banner looked at me skeptically as my face heated up. "I did," I insisted. "I've done this lab before. I mean… in Phoenix. But not with onions." His face cleared. "Whitefish blastula?" I nodded, and he made a small sound of approval. "You were in the advanced placement biology class in Arizona?"

"Yes." I'd been extremely annoyed to hear that this high school didn't offer it.

"It's a shame we don't have it. I wouldn't want you to not be challenged by any of the material," he mused. My blush returned. "No, I am. Challenged. I really like this class." That was kind of a lie, but who cared. Mr. Banner probably saw through my false enthusiasm, but just nodded again and left to yell at the people who had their books out.

Edward was making noises that sounded suspiciously like laughter, but when I turned to look at him he was studying the surface of the lab table. He looked up at me after a moment, and then out the window. It was still snowing, but much more lightly than before. "What brought you here?" he finally asked. I had the feeling he was forcing himself to make conversation.

I'd been asked that before, but more vaguely, and I'd gotten by with vague replies about wanting to live with my dad. I'd tried not to mention my mom remarrying- it seemed too personal, and I didn't want everyone feeling sorry for me. It wasn't like Phil was the step dad from hell. I doodled lines looping round and round in a circle on the edge of my notebook. "Family stuff. I wanted to live with my dad for a while."

"That's it?" he asked almost incredulously, before recovering. "Not that's it any of my business." _It's not_, is what I wanted to say, but I refrained. "Why did your family move here?" I already knew, but tit for tat. He smiled a little. "My dad thought we needed a change of scenery, and my mom always wanted to live in a small town." It came out like a well rehearsed line. I wondered how many times he'd had to say it over and over again.

"How long did you live in Alaska?" I asked out of curiosity. He shrugged. "A while. I miss it, sometimes."

There were a few moments of silence before he spoke again. "So… your mother got remarried?" I stiffened. Of course everyone here knew. Gossip traveled fast in a town as small as Forks. "Yeah. She lives in Florida with my step dad," I said shortly, not wanting him prying any further. "I'm sorry," he backpedaled hastily. "I didn't mean to-,"

"Whatever," I cut him off dismissively. "Everyone knows anyways, right?"

"I'm sorry-,"

"Don't be."

Mr. Banner announced that the time was up and everyone should have answers written down, before he began walking around collecting lab sheets. I handed it to him while Edward unplugged the microscope and put it away in silence. I felt a little bad; he seemed to have just been trying to be friendly, but I could almost _feel_ the relief emanating from him at the conversation being over. The last fifteen minutes of class was a lecture on mitosis. I stared at what was on the board, but none of it really sunk in. Edward gripped the edge of the lab table with one hand like it was a life line, and rushed out again as soon as the bell rang.

Mike caught up with me on the way to gym. "Well, that sucked," he groaned, running a hand through his spiked up hair. "I think we got half of them wrong, and Banner's such a tough grader…"

I was almost certain Edward and I had identified them all correctly, so I just shrugged. "It's just one lab."

"You guys finished way early," he commented as we left the building. It was no longer snowing, flakes only moving through the air because of the harsh wind. "Well," I pointed out. "I've done that one before, at my old school. And Edward seems smart."

"The Cullens are all like. Geniuses or some shit," he replied enviously. "I think they were home schooled until high school. Explains a lot."

I laughed a little in spite of myself. "Probably." It was mean, but Edward Cullen was weird. He'd been suspiciously chatty, but seemed to not really want to talk to me at the same time. Talk about 'being polite'. He was so worried about coming off as rude he came off even ruder.

We were _still_ playing volleyball in gym. I daydreamed most of the period away and my team mates grudgingly covered for me every time the ball was in my vicinity. I would have been more guilt ridden, but I was doing them all a favor. No one wanted a bloody nose. Or a fat lip.

When the day was finally over, the wind had died down to an eerie breeze. The parking lot was suspiciously quiet, other than for the sound of muffled laughter… until all hell broke loose. Snowballs were coming from every which way. Getting to the truck was a pain in the ass. I felt like I was in an action movie, sidling up behind car after car in a vain effort to make it out of the war zone. It didn't help that Mike and Jess kept spotting me and screaming my name to get me to come over to where the rest of the juniors were, behind a few benches, using the plow pileup as ammo. I eventually made it to the truck, and hauled ass inside, slamming the door shut, but even then I couldn't leave my parking space, since people were running around yelling like maniacs.

I saw the Cullens grouped by their Volvo. They looked to be debating whether to hide out in the car, like I was doing, or join in the fight. Emmett shrugged and screamed some battle cry before running off to team up with the seniors. Jasper settled for sniping people with no discrimination, and after a few minutes Alice joined in. Rose scrambled inside the car, and Edward followed.

I had to wait a good ten or fifteen minutes before the fight moved to the other side of the parking lot, someone yelling about going behind the gym or cafeteria. I quickly put the key in the ignition and pulled out. Evidently, a rusting old Toyota driver had the same idea. I gasped and hit the brakes as their horn blared. Lucky for them, I didn't even bump them. Toy Truck would have made mince meat out of their ride. I mouthed 'sorry' as they flipped me off and drove away, then pulled out all the way from the spot. I got a good look at the Volvo as I drove by. Edward Cullen and his older sister were laughing their asses off.

_You think she's an open book, but you don't know which page to turn to, do you?_

_\- Cake, 'Open Book'_


	3. Chapter 3

_Thank you to Lunacat247 and entschen for your reviews! Thank you to detsinbaby, Lunacat247, Laveycee, and Gem Ledington for your follows, and kat2335, Laveycee, and Gem Ledington for your favorites!_

CHAPTER THREE

I WOKE UP IN A PANIC on Tuesday morning; sure I'd slept in by the amount of unnatural light flooding through the sheer curtains in my room. I kicked away the covers and stumbled over to the window, leaning heavily on the sill as I peered outside, and then frantically looking at my clock. No, I hadn't slept in, but I saw why I'd thought I had.

There was no fog outside, none, and the snow from yesterday, while a little seemed to have melted, still coated the ground. But what was bad was that it must have rained at some point last night, because everything had a thin layer of ice on it. Just getting out of the house was not going to be easy. I was clumsy enough when it wasn't a frozen solid winter wonderland outside. I had no experience dealing with ice, either. Maybe Dad could give me a ride in early to school if he was still home. I looked to the driveway. The cruiser was gone. No such luck.

I had cereal and orange juice for breakfast, listening to the sound the heat made coming out of the groaning old radiators in the house. I just wanted to get this morning over with and be in school, which I found I actually vastly preferred to being home alone. It was weird to me; I'd always wished Mom would let me have more time to myself in Phoenix, but now that I was here, without her constant cheerful presence, I missed her bugging me about getting out of the house more often more than ever.

I dressed even more warmly than I had yesterday, actually taking the time to wrap a scarf snugly around my neck and wear gloves. I didn't bother with a hat- I didn't need my hair a staticy mess for the rest of the day. Grimly, I left the house, remembering to turn the heat way down, and edged my way down the walkway to the driveway. Luckily, the truck was pulled up right by the end of the walk, but even so I had to support myself on the door and almost lost my footing twice just getting it open and climbing inside. I huffed in irritation as I slammed the door behind me and dumped my backpack on the passenger seat, already so done with this weather. The snow was lovely, but the ice, not so much.

The roads were covered in ice, and in some patches it was black. I drove extremely slowly, paranoid about Toy Truck going spinning off the road, especially when I went over the creek bridge. I could just picture the truck sinking through the ice, into the freezing water. It was extremely nerve-wracking, and my hands were white knuckled when I pulled into the school parking lot. I was shocked I hadn't skidded even once- driving through the suburbs of Phoenix was nothing like roughly paved small town roads.

I saw why when I cautiously exited the truck, gripping my backpack tightly. Something silver was glittering on my tires. I carefully crouched down to inspect them. They were snow chains; Dad must have put them on this morning before he left for work. I was shocked, and swallowed hard. I knew he cared, but I hadn't even thought of him doing something like this. I wondered if I should thank him when I saw him tonight, or if that would just embarrass him. I at least wanted to let him know that I'd noticed. Maybe I could bake him something like a cake. Did he like cake? I couldn't remember, and the fact I had no idea unsettled me a little.

I was just standing back up, one hand tightly gripping the side of the truck, when I heard something that caught me entirely off guard. It was a weird, screech-like noise, getting louder and louder. I slowly turned my head, instead of my body, concerned about falling on my ass in the middle of the slowly filling up parking lot, but then I realized that was the least of my concerns.

A dark blue van was skidding across the parking lot, spinning wildly, completely out of control even as the driver kept trying to brake. I remembered in that instant whose van it was- Tyler Crowley's. He was in my Government class, and on the football team. People were screaming and yelling for him to stop, and, it dawned on me, for me to get out of the way. The van was going to hit the back corner of the truck, right where I was standing. I couldn't do anything. Even if I had tried to move, in those few seconds, chances were I would have fallen flat on my back and been in even more danger. All I could do was hold onto the truck and watch the van skid towards me. I saw Tyler's face as it got closer, contorted in horror.

I had no idea what my own face looked like- probably surprised. Maybe there was fear in my eyes, as it started to sink in that I was about to die, worst case scenario, or at the very least be severely injured, best case scenario. I didn't know how someone could possibly survive what was about to hit me- a giant mass of metal going at such a high speed-

I hit the ground, my head cracking back on the frozen pavement, but not as hard as I thought it should have. I should have felt my brains leaking out, if you could even feel that. I did feel pain, but not in the way I had expected to. A crushing weight was on top of me, and as I weakly struggled, I felt all my limbs. Nothing even seemed broken, to my amazement. Was I somehow trapped under the van? How was that possible? My eyes were open but I wasn't really seeing anything other than the cloudy sky above me. Was I dying? And hallucinating at the same time?

I saw eyes, then. It was so out of place in this scenario I would have screamed if I could have found my voice. But all I could do was stare at them. The eyes looked familiar, and then I realized they were part of a face, and that face had a head of red hair. It was Edward Cullen. What… where was the van? Why was he here? What was going on?

There was a groaning noise. I had no idea if I was the one making it, or if it was something else. Then my ears stopped ringing and I heard more. Yelling and screaming and "Where's Bella?" someone was shrieking and "Get him out of the van!" a teacher was bellowing.

"Shit," Edward hissed from on top of me. He appeared to be talking to himself. "Shit shit shit. This is bad. This is so fucking bad." He sounded distraught. Did he think I was dead? Was I? I couldn't be. I felt his hands on my shoulders, gripping hard, and his knees ramming into my legs.

Dead people couldn't feel things, as far as I knew. As far as anyone knew. Had anyone ever asked them? I was hysterical, and I could feel tears trickling down my cheeks, freezing in the cold air. Great, I was crying too, even though something about this struck me as hilarious, and I wanted to laugh, but I still hadn't completely caught my breath. I gasped harshly, sucking in air, and managed to get my hands to work to push at him. "Get _off_," I whispered hoarsely.

He stopped rambling to himself and looked down at me.

"Off," I muttered. "I can't- what- what happened?"

Edward scrambled away from me like a caged animal while I tried to sit up, which was easier said than. I propped myself up on my elbows and closed my eyes for a moment, then opened them and took new stock of my surroundings. We were surrounded by metal, because we were lying behind the tan car I'd parked Toy Truck next to, and on the other side of us was the van, luckily still upright, but badly dented. I looked over to my truck. The only damage seemed to be to the tail lights.

I sat up, and slowly tested my legs. Usable. I rolled my shoulders and felt my arms. Still attached. My head hurt like hell, as did my back, and I'd certainly had the wind knocked out of me… But nothing even broken? No cuts or bad scrapes? My jeans were filthy now, covered in snow and gravel and dirt, but they weren't even ripped.

"I don't think you should move around so much," Edward spoke up cautiously, as if I'd just woken up from a coma. I stared at him, and then thought he might be right, and eased myself back down onto the frozen ground. "Where did you come from?" I demanded weakly, still keeping my gaze on him.

He stiffened, eyes going from anxious to grave. "What?"

"You heard me-," I started to say, before the adults burst onto the scene. Sirens were blaring in the distance already, and it took Coach Clapp and Mr. Varner combined to move the van away from us to make enough room for the EMTs and stretchers to come in. I wished I'd died. It would have been less mortifying.

"She probably has a concussion," Edward told one of the EMTs in a disgustingly earnest manner. "She's not making a lot of sense."

I would have said the same about him- what had he done, dived at me- his brain had to be at least a bit rattled up from that- but I was already being carried away, strapped down to a stretcher, neck brace secured. From what I could see, the entire school seemed to be in the parking lot, watching in near silence. It was unreal. I felt like I was trapped in a bad dream. As they loaded me into the ambulance, a familiar police cruiser pulled up. My heart sank.

"Bella?!" Dad was jumping out of the cruiser and running over, face drawn and pale. I gritted my teeth, imagining throttling whoever had decided it was a good idea to call him. "I'm fine," I called out to him, but he didn't seem to hear me.

"She hit her head pretty hard, from what we're hearing," one of the EMTs was saying. "We're taking her, Tyler, and the Cullen kid up to the hospital, Chief. He knocked her out of the way of the van."

Edward was standing near the ambulance; arms crossed, a tense look on his face, and immediately shook his head. "I'm fine, there's not even a scratch on me- I don't need to go."

"Let your dad be the judge of that," Dad told him. I tuned them out, looking over the crowd once more. Mike and Jess were near the front, still looking horrified, Angela and Eric right behind them, and plenty of other faces I recognized as well. The Cullens, for example. Rose looked flat out angry, about what I had no idea, Jasper troubled, Alice worried, and Emmett shocked. Their gazes kept going from me to their brother and back again, but they didn't move from where they were standing.

Tyler was being loaded into a second ambulance nearby. I closed my eyes and just laid there uncomfortably as they closed the ambulance doors. It was maybe a five minute drive to the county hospital. I was ordered to keep my eyes open- maybe they were worried about me passing out with the concussion I was fairly sure I didn't actually have.

I was put in one bed, shrouded with absurdly cheerful looking plastic curtains, and I watched as Tyler was laid in the next one. He looked awful. His head was wrapped in bandages, and one arm was already in a sling. I tried to look away, but he caught my staring and immediately tried to bolt upright in bed while two nurses struggled to hold him down. "Bella! Christ, I'm sorry!"

I tried to shake my head. The neck brace made it difficult. "Tyler, I'm okay. It wasn't your fault." The nurses were unwrapping the bandages, exposing a series of cuts all over his face and neck, some nastier looking than another. Luckily, the bleeding seemed to have halted. "I was going way too fast," he continued, ashamedly. "I knew the moment I hit the ice."

He seemed far worse off than I did, and it wasn't as though I could hold a grudge when he looked like he'd just survived a horror movie. "You completely missed me," I tried to reassure him. "So don't worry about it, I just hit my head when Edward tackled me."

"Ed Cullen was there?" He looked puzzled. "But… I didn't see him. Where was he?"

"I don't know," I said honestly. "I didn't even notice him standing right by me, I guess."

He grimaced as a nurse dabbed at one the deeper looking cuts. "Is he okay? Is he here?"

"I think he's just fine," I muttered, wondering where Edward had gotten off to. Had he managed to talk his way out of having to go to the hospital? Or was he with his father right now?

They took a CT scan of my head, and as I'd thought, found nothing. I wasn't concussed. As far as I was concerned, I was perfectly fine and really just wanted to go home, take a long shower and nap, and pretend this had never happened. And maybe never return to school again. The aura of shiny newness about me was finally wearing off, and now I was going to be treated as The Girl Who Almost Died That One Time. I wasn't looking forward to it.

I wanted to get out of there, but the nurse said I had to wait to be checked out by a doctor before they let me go anywhere, so I was just going to have to wait.

Wait and hear apology after apology from Tyler, as it turned out. I figured he was rambling out of shock, and tried to ignore him in the politest way possible. I closed my eyes again, not wanting to stare at the curtains or the faded hospital wall. I quickly opened them a few minutes later when I heard footsteps. I'd hoped to see a doctor approaching my bedside, but it was Edward. He smiled almost nervously at me. I stared back, face as blank as sheet.

His smile wavered, but returned as Tyler spoke up, "Dude, I am so sorry about almost hitting you. I didn't even see you, but Bella told me you were right there." Edward glanced quickly from Tyler to me, standing in between our beds. I pushed myself up into a sitting position, relieved they'd taken the neck brace off when they'd done the head scan. "No harm done," Edward shrugged. "I'm fine, and I hear Bella is too."

"I don't have a concussion," I piped up rather snidely. "They checked. I'm just waiting to see a doctor."

"They're keeping me at least overnight, and maybe tomorrow too," Tyler said miserably.

"I can try talking to my dad," Edward said, ignoring my comment, and dragging over a chair to sit by us, "But he always says 'better safe than sorry'." The corner of his mouth twitched up, as if enjoying his own private joke.

"Ha. Ha ha," I mumbled, and brightened when I heard footsteps. "That has to be the doctor."

Edward turned and waved to the man as he came in. I figured he must be a friend of his father's, because this guy seemed far too young to be an adoptive father to four teenagers. He had to be in his early thirties at the oldest. Younger even than my dad, who was only about nineteen years older than me, after all. But Edward quietly greeted him with, "Hi, Dad," and my mouth dropped open. The man looked exhausted, but his face was unlined and his brown eyes were bright. His hair was such a pale blond it was almost white, and while he was a little shorter than average height for a man, maybe 5'8" or 5'9", he was still very handsome, with high cheekbones and a perfectly straight nose.

I tried to see any of the Cullens in his face, though it was ridiculous of me. I had heard from Jess that Jasper and Rose were Dr. Cullen's wife, Mrs. Cullen's, biological niece and nephew- apparently her name before marriage had been Esme Hale; she'd been their father's sister or something like that… But none of the other Cullens were related by blood. 'I don't think Mrs. Cullen can have kids,' Jess had told me in private, and though I didn't have any great desire to one day be a mother myself, I still felt for the woman.

"Miss Swan?" I realized this was the second time Dr. Cullen had said my name. "Sorry," I said quickly. "I'm fine, really. Can I go home?" He chuckled, and Edward looked both amused and worried. "Your scan looked good," the doctor continued. "How does your head feel? Edward says you hit it pretty hard and you seemed very confused- he thought you might have a concussion."

"Well, I don't," I retorted bluntly, my eyes fixed on Edward, who merely raised his hands in an expression of surrender.

Dr. Cullen felt along my head with his fingers, and proceeded to test my vision and hearing, then had me walk around the room and made Edward toss me a little ball, which I managed to catch out of sheer terror that my typical clumsiness would be mistaken for signs of a concussion. He asked me what the current date was and who was president, what my middle name was, when my birthday was, and finally seemed satisfied. "Your father's in the waiting room. I'm going to send you home with him, but any intense headaches, dizziness, nausea, if you feel like you're going to pass out, I want you back in this hospital. Alright?"

Freedom was almost within my reach. I nodded eagerly, and started to leave. It looked like Edward was debating whether to follow, as his father turned his attention to Tyler. I turned my back on all of them and marched off towards the waiting room, or the direction I guessed the waiting room was in. I hadn't been to this hospital since I was an infant, as I'd been born here.

"You're going the wrong way, you know." I turned around sharply to face Edward with a short sigh. He had his hands shoved in his pockets, his head cocked to one side.

"Why don't you lead me out, then?" I suggested coldly.

"Gladly," he said evenly, and was at my side in a few long strides. The lights in the hospital halls were bright, so I looked down at the floor most of the time to avoid squinting under them. "You've never answered my question," I finally reminded him, as we turned a corner. His pace slowed slightly, and I wondered if his hands were stiffening, curling into themselves like dying leaves tucked away in his pockets.

"What question?" He was playing dumb, and we both knew it. "About where you came from," I pressed insistently. Tyler hadn't seen him either, and he was acting fishy. Any fishier and he would have sprouted gills.

He rolled his eyes as if I was being silly. "Bella, I was right next to you. The next car over."

"No,you weren't." I asked flatly. "I would have noticed your car. Trust me." I watched his jaw tighten. He eyed me out of the corner of one green eye before speaking again. "Look, there was a van hurtling towards you. Don't beat yourself up over not seeing me. It's not like it matters." His tone was gentle, if slightly reproving.

I stopped walking and glared at him. I didn't like being treated like a child. He'd completely ignored me my very first day, and while my second encounter with him had been slightly better we certainly weren't friends. I didn't even really like him. "You're lying," I enunciated carefully. "I don't know why, but you are. You were nowhere near me, and then you were, and you somehow managed to outrun a speeding van. Tyler didn't see you, either."

"It was skidding," he clarified, but his eyes were wide. "Tyler was terrified out of his mind- of course he didn't notice me. Bella, I was close enough to get to you before the van. What- do you think I have superpowers or something?"

"Don't be stupid," I said immediately, feeling my cheeks heat up. "I just- You were _freaking_ out. You said it was 'bad'. You were cursing-,"

"I thought you might have been dead!" he snapped. "Or broken your spine! What are you getting at?"

I didn't know what I was getting at, actually, but my intuition told me something was very, very wrong. Yes, he'd saved my life. But something didn't ring true. I would have noticed him, if only out of the corner of my eye. I knew I would have. And that panic in his voice hadn't been panic for me. It had been about something else.

I simply shook my head. "I don't... fine. You know what, fine. Whatever. I'm delusional, you're right, let's just go. I want to go home."

He just looked at me for a moment before nodding, and we walked out into the waiting room together. It seemed like half of Forks was there. Jess and Mike converged on me. Edward wandered over to where his siblings were. I managed to fight off my friends and the questions and concerns of others and make my way over to where Dad was standing, arms folded, face pensive, by the hospital doors. "I already signed you out," he told me worriedly. "How do you feel?"

"Just swell," I said under my breath, then felt guilty for giving him an attitude, and looked up at him. "I mean, I'm fine, Dad. I just… I just want to get out of here." He slowly put his arm around me, giving me a small squeeze. "Me too, Bells. Come on."

I ordinarily wouldn't have, but I laid my head on his head on his shoulder as we left the hospital and the buzzing waiting room behind. We drove home in silence. I rested my forehead against the window. Dad didn't say much of anything until we pulled into the driveway. He didn't look at me, but looked somewhat shamed as he admitted, "You need to call your mom."

"Dad," I breathed in horror. "You _called_ her?" The last thing I wanted to do was have to assure Mom I was fine too. He sighed. "You were in the hospital after almost getting hit by a van- what was I supposed to do? What if you'd really been hurt?"

"But I _wasn't_." Miffed, I climbed out of the cruiser, shutting the door a bit harder than necessary. He followed me, frowning up to the front door. "Hey. Do you know what it was like for me to hear over the radio that there'd been an accident at the school, and that you were involved?" He held the door open for me. I didn't answer and rubbed the back of my head. "Sorry."

"Just give her a call."

Mom was nearly hysterical. I was on the phone with her for about an hour and a half, trying to calm her down and assure her that I was alright and that no, she didn't need to fly all the way here from Florida tonight. "Bella, come home," she pleaded at one point. I gritted my teeth. "Mom. This is home now, okay? I like it here." It was only half a lie. I still didn't consider Forks home, but I didn't hate it as much as I should have.

I spent the rest of the day in my room, avoiding Dad and avoiding the phone, which rung off the hook all afternoon and evening. I dreaded going back to school the next day, but had no real excuse to stay home, and part of me wanted to observe Edward Cullen, to see if I could figure out just what was going on with him. That was the first night I dreamed about him.

_Something like a phenomena, baby, you're something like a phenomena..._

_\- Yeah Yeah Yeahs, 'Phenomena_'


	4. Chapter 4

_Sorry for the length between updates! I kind of feel like this is almost a 'fillerish' chapter, maybe even more so in the original book, but who knows. Thank you to one new follower: 25thNight, and three new favorites: 25thNight, Pinkhippo204, and Soccerislife08. Enjoy the chapter! _

CHAPTER FOUR

THE DREAM was one of the strangest I'd ever had, one of those weird ones where you couldn't quite decide if it had been a nightmare or not. I didn't wake up screaming or crying, but unnerved and feeling like I was displaced, in another reality, as if I'd gone through a wormhole in my sleep. My dream was dark. Not dark as in grim or tragic, but literally pitch black, not a nighttime darkness, but a stifling, - hiding in a closet while playing hide and seek as a kid - darkness.

Someone was with me, though. I could hear them breathing, but no matter how many times I asked who it was, tried to feel for them, they never responded, though I knew it was Edward. I had no proof it was, but I knew. We were stuck in the dark together, suffocating, and no matter how many times I called his name, he never acknowledged me. When I woke up from this, it was three in the morning, the wind whispering at my window, and it took me another hour to fall back into an uneasy, lighter sleep.

The month that followed the accident was awkward. I was still the new girl, and now I was the 'almost died' girl to boot. To be fair, things were probably just as bad for Edward and Tyler, but I was the one who'd been 'saved'. I refused to acknowledge Edward as some sort of hero. Of course I was grateful to be alive, but I just wanted to forget about things, though it was hard when he and I both knew something else was going on with him, and he refused to say what.

For the rest of that week, Tyler, Edward, and I were fawned over. It made my skin crawl, Edward looked deeply uncomfortable, and Tyler spent most of the time giving me devastated 'sorry I almost killed you' looks, which, while well intended, got old after a while. Everyone wanted to hear everything about what had happened, even though most of them had been there to see it. My descriptions grew vaguer and briefer with every telling, but no one seemed to care. I eventually realized that was the most exciting thing to happen at the high school in years. There was nothing else to talk about, to freak out about, so everyone was going to milk this for all it was worth. The tiny local newspaper even did a piece on it. I saw the Cullens reading it one day at lunch. Edward looked horrified.

He and I rarely spoke to one another in Bio, which was my only reprieve period from the rest of the day, where it seemed like someone was always trying to get a first hand account of how I'd nearly been crushed by Tyler's van. Honestly, I was most concerned about my truck in the whole thing- but somehow, miraculously, the damage had been fairly minor. I wasn't unconvinced my truck wasn't secretly from another planet. Ironically, I had the same thoughts about my reluctant (I could think of no other word) hero and lab partner. I was still annoyed with him, but had no idea how to broach the topic again without looking like a delusional lunatic, or worse, a moron.

It was two whole weeks before I got up the nerve. I marched over to my seat, rearranged my things neatly in my corner of the lab table, and looked at him, rather than avoiding eye contact, as we'd both been doing previously. "Hi," I said for starters, getting ready to get some answers out of him, though I suspected it would be like pulling teeth. He barely turned his head towards me, nodded briefly, and struck up a conversation with someone else. I watched, flabbergasted that I'd been shut down so quickly, and not to be outdone, waved Mike over to vengefully chat with poor oblivious him.

And that was that. We didn't speak to one another for the rest of February. I was spitefully happy to ignore him as much as he was ignoring me. I kept dreaming. I'd never had this many vivid dreams in my entire life. Not all of them concerned Edward, true, but they were all about Forks in some way or another. I dreamed I was drowning in a rain puddle, I dreamed I walked out of the house one day to find that Forks was a ghost town, I dreamed I found the Cullens living in a gingerbread house in the woods, I dreamed I'd been hit by the truck and was watching the town attend my funeral… On and on they went. Was this some sort of late term puberty thing? Was I losing it?

Mom seemed convinced me in Forks was a disaster waiting to happen now, and called much more frequently. I was grateful for the phone conversations, because they distracted me, but she knew something was up. The snow was gone by March, melted away by heavy, constant rain. It felt like it was pressing down on me sometimes, forcing me to bow my head, beating the back of my neck and shoulders.

The first Tuesday of March, Jess called two hours after we got out of school. I'd been watching a lot of TV lately, and I got up from the mindless after school cartoon reruns to answer the phone. "Bella?" Her tone was slightly nervous.

"This is she," I said dryly, then sat down at the kitchen table, stretching the phone cord to a dangerous length. "What's up, Jess?"

"Thank God it's you, I was afraid of getting your dad," she giggled, and then there was a pause. I waited. "I don't know if you know- the spring dance is in two weeks. It's a Sadie Hawkins dance. Girls ask boys."

I sensed what was coming, and sighed. "You know I don't go to school dances- where are they having it? The gym?" I snorted.

She made a noise on the other end of the line and blurted out. "I just wanted to know if you thought I should ask Mike to it. I asked Lauren-,"

I rolled my eyes on the other end of the line. Lauren was one of Jess's friends, though she didn't have our lunch period. Lauren was also, I'd judged almost immediately, a shallow, materialistic bitch.

"And she said I should, because 'he's wanted to get in my pants since eighth grade'. But I don't know. Mike's nice and everything, and he's pretty cute, but do I really like him like that? Sometimes I feel like I do, and then I'm just like 'wait, this is Mike Newton we're talking about; you've known him since diapers'."

I didn't know why I was being dragged into this. Yes, Mike obviously had a crush on Jess, and Jess obviously wasn't as oblivious to it as I'd thought she might be. But I wasn't the go-to advice giver here. I'd never had a boyfriend before. I'd been on dates, yes, but they were generally one time things.

"Bella? Are you still there? What do you think?" She sounded frantic- Jess could sound frantic about anything.

"I think you should ask him," I finally said. "See how it goes. It's not as if you're asking him to be your boyfriend. It'll just be one dance if you really can't stand him."

She was quiet, then seemed to warm to the idea. "Yeah. Yeah! Okay. I will ask him. He'll probably be over the moon about it. You know Mike. Are you sure you're not going?" Her tone turned to wheedling in an instant. "You could ask Eric."

"I don't think so," I muttered.

"Or Edward!" At that, I nearly dropped the phone. "Edward?" It was hard to keep the shortness out of my voice. "He can't stand me. The very sight of me seems to make him sick to his stomach."

"Don't be stupid," Jess retorted. "He saved your life, didn't he?" I wished everyone would stop bringing that up, as if I was forever in his debt. "I didn't think the Cullens even went to dances," I chose to reply snidely.

I almost heard her shrug. "Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Usually just Alice and Jasper go. They're _really_ good dancers." I could almost picture the two of them commandeering the dance floor. They probably tangoed.

"I'm not asking anyone," I said firmly. "Or Tyler!" she went on. "Tyler?" Now I was incredulous. "He still feels really bad about almost murdering you," she snickered. I groaned. I'd moved on. Why couldn't everyone else? _You haven't really moved on, _a little treacherous voice reminded me. _If you'd moved on, you wouldn't be upset about Edward not speaking to you_.

"Fine," she drew the word out in distaste. "Angela's not going either. It's just going to be me and Lauren and Mike and _everyone else_." I made an affirmative noise and hung up, shaking my head.

Jess was walking on the air the next day, and I knew Mike had enthusiastically said yes. She chattered nonstop about needing to find a dress and what she should wear her hair like, playing with her dark curls. Mike looked pleased as punch. Eric sent me many hopeful looks in English. I ignored them all. In Biology, as Edward and I sat in our usual tense silence, Mike made his way over, unable to keep the grin off his face. I couldn't help but smile back.

"Did you talk her into it?"

I shrugged. He laughed. "Alright. I just- I can't believe she asked me. I never thought…" he trailed off, before changing the subject. "You going?" I shook my head. "Aw, c'mon Bella," he whined, sounding suspiciously like Jess. "Everyone says you haven't really experienced Forks until you experience a Forks high school dance."

"No one says that, Mike," I replied flatly, and quickly came up with an excuse I hadn't thought of while talking to Jess the night before. "Besides, I'm going up to Seattle then. I've been planning it for a while now."

"You can't go any other weekend?" He asked. Mike almost sounded forlorn- I would have thought he was an incredibly talented actor had he not been so earnest in almost everything he said and did.

"Sorry," I said, in a 'not sorry' tone of voice, but added more lightly, "Cheer up. You and Jess will be swinging on the dance floor."

"I'm a really bad dancer," he admitted. Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw Edward laugh silently, but I didn't turn around to glare at him, even if the temptation was strong. "Well, you're not alone there," I assured him.

Mr. Banner clapped his hands together like he was summoning thunder and lightning to strike us down with and Mike jumped a little and wandered off to his seat. Edward was subtly glancing over at me. "Yes?" I mouthed at him in annoyance, and he looked away, and was immediately called on to answer one of Banner's rapid fire questions from the homework last night. He got it right, of course. When the bell rang roughly forty minutes later, I packed up as swiftly as usual, before the sound of a clearing throat made me pause. I swung my backpack onto my shoulder and turned to face him. He looked apologetic.

"I've been rude," he began with, and I did my best to maintain eye contact while still rolling my eyes, which was difficult, but I managed. "I didn't know we were talking again."

"I thought it'd be better if we both let ourselves cool off a bit. After what happened."

"What are you referring to? Both of us almost dying? Your apparent super speed? You avoiding all of my questions?" I kept my voice down even lower then its normal quiet pitch, but I was a little surprised at how much effort it actually took to keep it contained. He leaned back slightly in his seat, and then stood up, pushing the chair in, face grim. "Nothing I could say would make you feel any better, trust me."

I narrowed my eyes at him. What, did he think I was desperately seeking closure? "This is not about my _feelings_. This is about wanting to know the _truth_. Which you won't give me. So I guess we have nothing to say to each other." The classroom had just about cleared out. Mike was lingering at the door, staring at the two of us.

I felt extremely uncomfortable, and took a step away from Edward, turning around to go. I bumped into the corner of the lab table and stumbled forward, dropping my pencil case. Edward slowly picked it up and handed it to me, stiffly. "Thank you," I said shortly, and left with Mike. To his credit, Mike didn't pry much on the way to gym, but he gave me a series of strange looks, which I pretended not to see.

We'd gone from volleyball to basketball in gym. I was even worse at basketball, if that was possible, since I couldn't get away with standing still all the time. I cowered near the bleachers and tried to stay out of everyone's way. To my relief, no one tried to pass to me. We watched a movie in American History- I would have liked to sat there and stewed over what had happened in Biology, but we had to answer questions about the film, so I was working up until the minute the final bell rang.

I hurried out to my truck, but slowed my pace cautiously when I saw someone hanging around near it. It was Eric, I realized then, and relaxed a bit. "Hi," I said slowly, moving to unlock my door. He stepped aside awkwardly, looking as if he was on the verge of blurting something out. I glanced at him. "Can I help you?"

"Would you go to the spring dance with me?" he word vomited, all of his bravado disappeared in the face of teenage tension, and I leaned against the half open door of my truck. This didn't exactly come as a surprise to me, but I already knew what I was going to say. "I thought it was girl's choice." I'd meant for it come out sort of amused but it just sounded blunt.

He stared at his sneakers, flushed red. "I mean- it is. You're pretty quiet, so I didn't…"

What was that supposed to mean? He'd assumed I'd just been too shy to ask anyone, so he thought he'd save me the trouble? I blew out a breath, annoyed. "I'll be in Seattle then, so actually I'm not going with anyone. Sorry."

Eric was reminiscent of a tomato. "Rightokaymaybenexttimethen," he said, words spilling out in an embarrassed drawl, and slunk off. I felt a stirring of guilt over turning him down so quickly, but I really was going to be in Seattle, so it wasn't as if I'd lied. It was just a stupid dance. I climbed into Toy Truck and carefully backed out of my spot, only to glower as the silver Volvo pulled out of its own parking spot right in front of me. The driver was Edward, and he seemed content to hold up a growing line of cars just to wait for his siblings, who were walking over and in no rush. I rolled my eyes as someone behind me slammed on their horn, and wondered if I could just inch up and maybe break off the license plate. Surely I'd get away with it, right? After all, my dad _was_ the police chief.

I turned on the radio as I waited, Kelly Clarkson filling the cab of Toy Truck.

_You had your chance, you blew it… Out of sight, out of mind. Shut your mouth, I just can't take it; again and again and again and again-_

"COME ON, MOVE ALREADY!" someone in a car behind me screamed out their rolled down window, and I jerked Toy Truck into motion. While I was spacing out the rest of the Cullen clan had gotten into the Volvo, which was speeding off. I hoped they got ticketed. I drove home pretty fast, for once glad Forks was so small, because it made the commute even faster and in roughly a month I already knew all the roads and neighborhoods like the back of my hand.

Once I was home, I preoccupied myself with thinking of what to make for dinner to take my mind off things. I'd quickly established myself as head of the kitchen, and rarely did Dad make dinner now, choosing to the cleanup instead so long as I cooked. I rummaged through the pantry, taking stock of what we had. We had tortillas. We had salsa. There was chicken and cheddar cheese in the fridge. Quesadillas sounded good to me. Mexican food was incredibly common in Arizona, of course, as were cowboy steaks. The quesadillas wouldn't take very long to make, so once I made sure I had everything I wandered upstairs to do some reading and check my email.

Twenty or so minutes later the phone was ringing off the hook. I prayed it wasn't Eric, having a sudden thought that he probably had my number. Everyone seemed to have everyone's number in Forks. At least I didn't have a cell phone. Most of the richer kids in my high school in Phoenix had had them, and they were bleeding over into the rest of us commoners when I'd moved. In Forks, though, the only teenagers I'd ever seen around with cell phones were the Cullens. Some of the adults didn't even have them.

I came downstairs just in time to answer the phone on the final ring. It was Jess, again. She'd heard Eric had asked me, and apparently found the whole thing hysterical. I felt uncomfortable discussing it, but she went on about how she was going to try to get Angela to ask him. Lauren was planning on asking Tyler, and was paranoid I was going to ask him first. I assured Jess I wasn't, and ranted about going to Seattle until she seemed convinced I really wasn't planning on attending the dance. We hung up a few minutes later and I sat in front of the television, not really watching it, just thinking.

_Nothing I could say would make you feel any better, trust me. _

"Liar," I muttered to myself. "You could tell me what really happened."

I spent another half hour downstairs before going up to start on my homework. I had a boatload of it, and I had to put it down to take a break when Dad came home. He left me alone while I broiled the chicken and did my best to shred it before mixing it in with the salsa and cheese in a bowl. I put the mix in the tortillas and searched for some of the leftover rice from the time Dad and I had ordered Chinese while it baked in the oven.

Dad looked slightly nervous about trying quesadillas, but ate like he was starving once he tried the first bite. I was glad he trusted me not to poison him, anyways. When we were finishing dinner, I realized I should probably broach the topic of Seattle to him. I was technically going to have to ask for permission, but I was determined not to phrase it like that. Then I'd have to be asking him for everything, which would drive me insane, since I was very capable of looking after myself.

"Dad," I started slowly, "I just wanted to let you know I was planning on going to Seattle a week from this Saturday."

He didn't look mad, but surprised. "What're you doing in Seattle?"

I helped him clear the dishes off the table. "There's some books I wanted to get from one of the bookstores in the city, and I wanted to look at some clothes, too. I have money," I added, just in case he thought this was the start of a pitch for donations. Since I hadn't had to pay for my own car, and I did have some savings. I wasn't planning on blowing it all at once, of course, but knowing I wasn't broke was nice.

"How's the gas mileage on your truck?" he asked, putting our glasses in the sink. It was awful, but I shrugged. "I'll stop in Montesano and Olympia- and Tacoma. I'll be careful, Dad?"

He studied me for a few minutes then asked what he'd probably wanted to ask from the start. "Are driving up there by yourself?"

"Yes," I replied warily. Was he worried that I was lying and _wouldn't_ be alone, or that I _would_?

The latter, apparently. "Seattle's a big city," he warned. "I don't want you to be wandering around it now knowing where you're going. There's a high crime rate."

I looked away so he wouldn't see the exasperated expression on my face. "There was a lot of crime in Phoenix too, Dad, and Seattle's much smaller than Phoenix. I'll be fine. I'll have a map, and I'm sticking to the shopping districts- I'll go in the morning, and be back before it even starts to get dark."

Dad seemed slightly appeased by this. "Are you sure you don't want me to come with you? Forks could survive a day without me." I managed to hide my frantic 'no' expression. "I'm sure. You won't even notice I'm gone."

The next morning I parked on the opposite end of the lot from the Cullens, determined to not have a repeat of yesterday. I dropped my car keys as I hopped out of Toy Truck and groaned, bending down to pick them up. When I straightened up, there was Edward Cullen. "Jesus!" I gasped, and almost dropped my keys again. He acted like he had no idea what I was so started about. "Are you alright, Bella?"

"I'm great," I snapped, then pressed my lips together in a thin line and walked past him. He was quick to catch up with me. Well, _this_ was new. Last, I'd checked, he'd still been pretending I didn't exist.

"I wanted to apologize- for yesterday, for everything."

I laughed mirthlessly as we trooped through a massive puddle. "I've been waiting for you to apologize for saving my life for a while now."

He stopped, frozen, and it occurred to me that I might have crossed some sort of line. I tensed, crossing my arms across my chest. He looked _pissed_. "For someone smart, you act like an idiot sometimes," he almost snarled and I lifted my chin, staring him down. "Going to apologize for that too, _Ed_?"

He flinched away from me, the anger dissipating from his green eyes, and he sighed as I started walking again. "Could you please just get to whatever point you're trying to make?" I asked coldly, glancing back at him. "I have to get to class."

"You sidetracked me," he said under his breath, but cleared his throat. "I heard you're going to Seattle the day of the spring dance." Curse this small town and its gossipy teens. If Jess herself had told him I'd kill her. I raised an eyebrow and didn't say anything.

He continued, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat with what I assumed was nerves, though I had no idea what he could be so nervous about. "I was wondering if you wanted a ride."

"A ride?" I repeated slowly. "With… you?"

He nodded. "We could… we could talk about things then."

I wasn't particularly fond of this idea, but he'd pressed down hard on my curiosity buttons. As stupid as the thought of accepting a ride from a guy I barely knew to go to a city I'd never actually been to sounded, I sort of doubted he'd have saved my life just so he could murder me later. Sounded a bit contradictory. "Alright," I finally said. "But we leave when I say so, you drive how I say so, anything weird happens and I _will_ make us go off the road, and I get to choose the music."

He tried a smile. I'd almost forgotten what it looked like on his face. "No weirdness," he promised. "See you in Bio."

"Bella!" People were calling my name. I hurried off to join Jess and Mike, who were flirting on the sidewalk, and didn't look back.

_You and your smile hold a strange invitation..._

_\- George Benson, 'Invitation'_


	5. Chapter 5

_Better late than never, right? *Cricket. Cricket.* Right. I'll just let you get on with reading the chapter. Warning: dorks listening to Impressionist music while cutting class lie ahead. Thank you paskudNIK and tommyskid for your follows, and tommyskid for your fave!_

CHAPTER FIVE

I MADE IT TO ENGLISH with plenty of time. I wasn't surprised by that- Edward hadn't held me up for very long. We were still covering _Macbeth_, except now we were supposed to be working on a project based on one of the characters from it. Mr. Mason didn't let us choose our groups, but by chance I was paired with Mike and Eric. It was a bit awkward, what with Eric having asked me to the dance, and Mike, knowing that from Jess and seemingly very amused by it, kept dropping hints to Eric that I did have some interest in him and was just playing hard to get. I looked aghast at Mike and repeatedly mouthed _Angela will ask him_ throughout the class period, to no avail.

When class got out I gave him the cold shoulder, but his enthusiasm about the better weather reports for this weekend was infectious. The rain might actually let up from Friday night to Sunday night. It would only get into the high forties, but that was nearly summer weather for Forks, apparently. I thought about my stupidity in agreeing to Edward's offer throughout the morning, and went back and forth from convinced everything would be fine to convinced he was actually a marvelous liar and a scheming murderer.

Jess talked nonstop about the dance during lunch. Angela had just asked Eric right before, and he'd readily agreed, and Lauren had snapped up Tyler like the blonde crocodile she was. They were all going together, and hated to leave me out- was I _sure_ there was no chance of me coming? "Trust me, I'm _sure_ there's no chance of me coming to the 'Forks High Spring Dance 2005'," I said dryly and then felt bad when I saw the hurt flashing in her bright blue eyes. The level of guilt I felt shocked me. I hadn't realized how much I cared about my new friends' feelings.

For a while now I had been thinking of them as 'friends' in the temporary sense- friends until a miracle happened and I somehow landed back in Arizona, friends until I graduated and got the hell out of here, friends until I wasn't the New Girl anymore and they got bored with me…. But I'd been in Forks for about a month, my novelty wearing off slowly but steadily, and Jess and Mike and Angela and even Eric were still hanging around me.

I was remorsefully silent on the lunch line, not feeling like eating when Jess was clearly upset, and only bought a bottle of lemonade. Jess didn't say another word to me until a minute or two after we'd sat back down, Mike glancing warily between us, trying to gauge who was unhappier with whom, Angela keeping her eyes on her lunch. "Ed Cullen is looking over here at you," she finally said. "I think he's trying to get your attention."

Grateful for the distraction, and ignoring the cold tone of her words, I looked around, searching for his red head until I spotted him, sitting apart from his siblings for once. He waved. Multiple heads turned to see whom he meant.

I flushed, and looked back mournfully at my friends. Jess shrugged, but it was a softer, less curt shrug than it could have been, and I smiled nervously, apologetically. "Go see what old Eddie wants," she instructed. "And report back, soldier." Mike laughed; I saluted, and snatched up my lemonade as I approached 'old Eddie'.

"Yes?" I asked by way of greeting as I slid into a seat across from him. He smiled. It was a bit tormented looking, not to be dramatic. "I'm having second thoughts. But," he continued, "Seeing as I'm going to hell anyways I figure- why not?"

Wait. What?

"You sound mentally unwell right now," I commented, twisting the cap off my lemonade. "Just to let you know." Edward slid down in his seat until he was nearly falling out of it. The effect was comical. "I know," he sighed. "Rose has been saying the same thing."

I glanced in her direction. She was studying her French manicure two tables over.

"We're close," he said by way of explanation. "Yes," I said. I couldn't imagine what they had in common.

"She thinks I should never speak to you again."

I blinked. "How… nice of her." Did she think that because she didn't like me, because she was a bit of a bitch, or because she didn't want me to know her brother's secrets, whatever they might be?

"She means well," he conceded. "She's very… _protective_ when it comes to family."

Great. The caring big sister. Was I going to get shit from her if she found out I'd gone with Edward to Seattle? I sighed. "You wanted me to come over here just to tell me that? Plan's off, then?"

He fidgeted, obviously conflicted, and then let his green eyes drift up to stare at the ceiling before returning his troubled gaze to me. "I- I don't know what to do," he confessed. "You-," Edward bit his lip and didn't say anything else. Exasperated, I took a sip of lemonade. "I'm trying, okay?" he replied defensively to my silent judgment.

"I can see that," I responded calmly. "Maybe try a just a little bit harder?"

He shook his head. "You shouldn't be going to Seattle with me."

I regarded him balefully for a few moments before announcing, "Well, now I'm confused." He stared at the table as if it had just called him a dirty word. "I mean, I'll drive you. But I'm not-,"

"Wait," I interrupted. "Let's play 'Guess the Ending'. Okay. 'I'm not who you think I am.' 'I'm not a good person.' 'I'm not the kind of guy you should be hanging around with.' Anywhere close?"

He actually laughed, before shaking his head again. Seeming to want something to do with his hands, he snatched up my cap and started flipping it between his fingers. I tried not to go cross-eyed watching, before snapping my finger before his eyes.

"Earth to Edward. Let's clear one thing up, and I can go back to my friends and leave you to your… intense inner conflict. Are. You. Driving. Me. To. Seattle. The. Day. Of. The. Spring. Dance."

He opened his mouth to speak at least twice, but I made a throat slicing motion until I was done. When he got the all clear to speak via a sardonic thumbs up, he cleared his throat, looked like he had a lot more to say, and ended up just admitting, "Yes," sounding about as guilty as original sin. So long as it wasn't guilt a la 'sorry that I'm going to murder you soon', I didn't care. I was getting a ride, and I was getting answers.

I took a triumphant sip of lemonade, and looked up to see him staring at me with the strangest expression. "You're so hard to read." It was reminiscent of a child whining about being denied a favorite toy.

I smiled grimly. The blank face was something I excelled at. It'd been easy to learn- I just made myself look the opposite of Mom in terms of expressions, and she was the definition of an open book. "Good. Though, you're not the most open person yourself. Very confusing, actually." Edward looked mildly offended, but not very surprised. "What are your theories, then?" I blinked. "Theories?"

He made a vague motion with his hands, the cap to my lemonade bottle skittering across the table and onto the floor. "Sorry. You know, theories about me. You obviously have some."

"Insufficient evidence," I replied dryly. "I need a bit more than 'freaky powers of invisibility or super speed or time travel to have any concrete theories." He groaned. "Guesses, then. I need to know what I'm up against, right?"

"Not really," I said primly, but rattled off a few anyways. "Super powers. Magic powers. Alien. From the future. From the past. Ninja, trained in the mountains of Tibet."

He looked thrilled. "Brilliant." I frowned. "I was right?"

He grinned, but it didn't reach his eyes. "If you were any further off the mark you'd be in outer space." Then his brow creased. "There's one thing I haven't been able to work out."

"And what's that?"

"You're not afraid," he announced. "Not even the slightest bit intimidated." He sounded genuinely, almost uneasily confused.

I gave him a look. "Why would I be? No offense, but…" I made a sort of noise that indicated there was not much to be afraid of.

Edward scowled, and then changed the subject. "I won't be in Bio today."

"Okay. You didn't seem like the class ditching type." I leaned down and scooped my lemonade cap up off the filthy cafeteria floor.

"I'm not. Usually. But I can feel a migraine coming on." He massaged his forehead, out of pain or for effect, I had no idea.

I shrugged and stood up, lemonade in one hand, cap in the other. "Have fun with the stoners." It came out more snobby than I meant it, but I walked back to my table, still processing yet another odd conversation shared between me and Edward.

I dropped into my seat, and Jess pounced. "Did he ask you out?" Her tone was excited, rather than annoyed or jealous, and I felt a surge of relief. Some of my appetite was returning. I shook my head and took a long swig of my lemonade. "He needed help with his Bio homework." It wasn't a very convincing lie, but I didn't think he'd appreciate me going around telling everyone I was trying to figure out if he was an alien or a superhero or a ninja. I hadn't said a word about it before, and I didn't plan to now.

"What's he waiting for?" she demanded. "You're like, the only girl I ever see him regularly talk to."

"I don't even think we're really friends," I said dryly. "Sorry."

Mike snickered and Angela hid her expression behind a hand while Jess made noises of outrage. "You WILL get together," she threatened, blue eyes narrowed. At least, it sounded like a threat.

_Good luck with that_, I thought, half amused, half exasperated. We hadn't even gotten to mutual nickname basis. I still didn't call him Ed, unlike most of the student body. The shortening just seemed to belie a sort of bond I seriously doubted we had. If there was one, it was probably a scraggly thread.

When the bell rang, I lingered at the doors for a moment, scanning the lunchroom. Sure enough, Edward hadn't moved at all. He was still sitting at the same table, though he was now in intense conversation with his siblings.

Rose seemed to be doing most of the talking, her smile somewhat forced. Emmett loomed behind her like a bodyguard, his expression incredulous. Alice was sitting on the table, swinging her short, skinny legs, picking at a hole in one of the knees of her gauzy black stockings. Jasper was standing so close to her they were nearly embracing, saying something in her ear. He looked worried. The smallest Cullen suddenly turned to look right at me, a curious expression on her face, like she was seeing me for the first time. Then she beamed, and I slipped away, hurrying to join an impatient Mike and Angela.

I was on edge as soon as I entered the Bio classroom, because I saw the equipment laid out. Indicator cards, applicators, tiny lancets, sterile gloves and permission slips galore. My class in Phoenix had already done this lab too, but I'd been conveniently absent that day and had gotten away with just doing a written report. My nonsensical fear of blood was not something I'd wanted everyone laughing about.

It wasn't that I was terrified of _all_ blood- I was a teenage girl, I dealt with a period monthly without having a nervous breakdown. And I'd had my share of cuts and scrapes and bloody noses growing up, even if I'd been far from an 'outdoorsy' type of kid. It was mostly just other people's blood that freaked me out, and always had. Horror movies were… well, I hadn't watched many slasher films, to say the least.

I concentrated on the floor as Mr. Banner went on to demonstrate to the class the correct procedure for drawing their blood, stressing being sanitary and not fooling around. No chance of that with me. I was almost on the floor already, stomach roiling just hearing about it. Thank God I hadn't really eaten anything other than a few of Angela's potato chips, which she had kindly shared at lunch. I was already picturing yet another title for myself: Bell Swan, The New Girl, The One Who Almost Died, Vomit Queen.

I chanced a look up as Mr. Banner moved around the classroom, but my ears were ringing and I put my head back down. I listened, cringing, as the sound of his footsteps got closer and closer.

"Do you need to go to the nurse's office, Bella?"

"Yes," I said in a very quiet voice.

I heard him sigh and presumably look around the room. "Angela- Angela! Yes, come here. Can you help Bella to the nurse's office?"

I tried to stand up, and locked my knees together, feeling wobbly as I caught a glimpse of red somewhere in the room. Angela looked as though this was not how she had planned to spend Biology, but didn't complain and helped/dragged me out of the room.

It was damp outside, but at the moment not raining. Angela and I moved slowly, but had to stop after we passed the cafeteria. I had to sit down before I fell down. "Just one sec," I muttered, crumpling onto my butt on the edge of the sidewalk and putting my head in between my knees for a few moments. The spinning, grey green world around me slowed down. Angela hummed quietly to herself, and I could feel her worried gaze on me.

"Are you alright?" She asked after a minute. "I can run and get the nurse… or…"

"No," I shook my head fervently, and bit my lip as the dizziness returned, but it faded more quickly this time. "I'm better now. Let's go." I slowly clambered to my feet, taking her cool hand, and stiffened when I saw someone coming towards us.

It was Edward, because who else could it have been, and Angela seemed just as stunned as I was. "What's happened?" he asked as he neared us, strides getting longer.

"Nothing's happened," I groaned, just as Angela admitted, "We're going to the nurse. Bella was feeling faint in Bio."

"Do you need help getting there? Bella, you look as white as a sheet."

"Huh," I muttered, and Angela breathed, "Yes, please. I'm afraid she's going to faint and crack her head open." It occurred to me that this was the most I'd heard Angela say at once in a while. The threat of cracked skulls must have brought out the conversation in her.

He stepped over to help support my weight, and between the two of them I was practically carried into the nurse's office. I would have been bright red had it not felt as if all the color had permanently drained out of my face. The nurse's office was actually in the back of the main office. It was a shabby room the size of a large closet, with barely enough room for an ancient cot and a desk with an older woman sitting behind it, reading a romance novel.

She looked up, and seemed more exasperated than surprised by our entrance and my appearance. "Let me guess. Blood typing in Biology again?"

Angela flushed as though she were the one looking queasy and nodded mutely. Edward awkwardly looked away. Both of them busied themselves with helping me lie down on the cot, before I summoned up the strength to swat them away. "You'll be fine in a few minutes," the nurse told me, gaze returning to her book. I made a noise of assent and wriggled to get more comfortable on the cot, staring at the ceiling. My dizziness was basically gone, and the nausea was already rapidly going away.

Angela and Edward hovered nearby- Angela looked like she very desperately wanted to be back in Biology- for all her meekness I sort of doubted she was fazed much by blood- and Edward looked like he was fine where he was. After all, it wasn't as if he had any plans to go to class. The only sound was of turning pages, my heavy breathing, a clock ticking somewhere, and a radio in the next room.

"I should have ditched with you," I muttered to Edward after a minute or two. He hissed a 'shhhh', jerking his head towards the nurse, but smiled a little. Angela looked between the two of us. "Are you feeling any better?"

I propped myself up on my elbows, slowly. "Yeah. Sorry to keep you here. I'll see if I can get up."

Edward extended his hand as if I were an eighteenth century lady alighting delicately from a carriage. I ignored it and staged forward like a drunk, before grabbing his wrist like a vice to steady myself. For some reason I'd thought his skin would be cool, frigid even, but it was warmer than mine. "Your palms are sweating like mad," he observed, and I rolled my eyes carefully, in case that made my vision blur again. "Angela, if you want to go ahead to Bio, I can wait around with Bella and make sure she gets to her next class."

"Of course, I wouldn't want to be caught _skipping_," I murmured, in revenge for the sweaty palms comment. He gave me a look of disdain.

"If you're sure," Angela said nervously, but she already had one hand on the door. "Go have fun," I urged her, only a tad sarcastically, and she bolted out like a shot.

"Sign in," the nurse remembered absentmindedly, shoving a clipboard across her desk towards me. "And out, if you're going." I scribbled my name and the time and slowly left the office with Edward. It was just as gray and green outside, but I felt as though some color had returned to my cheeks. Hopefully. I'd let go of Edward's wrist, but I plodded along slowly, in no rush to return to Bio, or anywhere. I didn't think my exit from the class had gone very widely noticed, as everyone had been distracted with the lab, but I was worried Angela would tell everyone and _once again_ I'd be the talk of our grade, if not the whole school.

"How did you even see Angela and me anyways?" I broke the silence we'd sunk into as we picked our way along the soggy sidewalk.

"I saw you from my car," his voice was distant, even though he was right beside me. "I was listening to some music."

I slowed my pace even more, scuffing at the ground with my sneaker. "I'm not going back in that classroom. It's probably even worse now- there's still twenty minutes left in the period."

"I wasn't about to frog march you in there," he snickered, then sobered. "What class do you have next?"

"Gym," I groaned. "Great- from the nurse's office to the girl's locker room."

"You could always skip it," he advised. "They'll just think you're still in the nurse's. Coach Clapp isn't going to bother calling."

I was adverse to the idea of willfully not attending a class, but I hated Gym, and I convinced myself that I still felt a little off. "Where do I go, then?" I asked a little embarrassedly. Edward shrugged. "My car?"

"Oh, _smooth_," I said in disgust, mostly to cover my own awkwardness, and he looked aghast. "Not like- not like that!"

"I know what you meant," I sighed. I hoped his car didn't smell weird. And that I didn't find myself trapped in an enclosed space with him, suddenly realizing what a terrible idea it had been. But if I was trusting him to drive me to Seattle… and not be freaky… this could be like a test run. Either way, if things went south I was keying him in the face.

It started to rain again just as we reached his car, but for once I almost welcomed it. It was cold, and my face and neck had gotten hot. I tilted my head back, aware of Edward staring at me with a strange expression on his face from the other side of the car. After a moment he unlocked the doors, and I slipped into the passenger seat. It didn't smell weird; it smelt like a floral scent- perfume, I realized, probably one of his sister's. If I had to guess, Rose's. Alice didn't strike me as the type who bothered with flowery perfume, and if she did it, it was probably candy apple scented or something like that.

When he put the key in the ignition his radio turned back on, and I frowned as I realized I was familiar with what he'd been listening to. "Clair de Lune," I said. "You like Debussy?"

"I like all music," he said evenly. I started humming 'Dancing Queen'. He snorted. "Alright, I like Impressionist. And jazz. Grunge too."

"You live in Washington," I laughed. "Seattle's right around the corner. Of course you do."

"I was born in Illinois, you know," he muttered, slightly pink, and then stopped himself from saying much more. "I don't really remember it much."

I sensed it was a bad topic for him, and graciously steered the conversation back to music. "My mom would play this around the house all the time when I was little. All sorts of classical music."

"Is your mom like you?"

I leaned against the door to stare at him. "What do you mean?"

"You seem… close with her. When you talk about her, you sound more like you're talking about a friend or sister than a mother."

I shook my head defensively. "She's a good mom. We get along really well. What about you and-," I hesitated, not sure how to address Mrs. Cullen. But he called Dr. Cullen 'Dad', so I had to assume it was the same for his adopted mother. "And your mom? Are you close?"

He smiled almost warmly. "She's wonderful. She's the most kind hearted person I know. I'm lucky to have her and my dad for parents." Coming from anyone else, it would have sounded manufactured; an easy lie. Coming from someone like Edward Cullen, I seriously doubted he was fibbing.

'Clair de Lune' had since finished playing. The CD had moved onto Ravel. 'Sonatine', apparently. I liked the sound of it. I rested my head against the window, watching rain drops streak down it. "It must be nice," I said thoughtfully. "Having all those siblings. I always wondered what that'd be like."

"Sometimes you don't know what you'd do without them, and sometimes you want to brutally murder them," he intoned dryly. "I get along best with Rose and Jasper. Emmett likes to try to drive me up the wall, and Alice can be…. aggravating."

I laughed softly. "I bet you don't have to share bedrooms, though."

I watched him shudder out of the corner of his eye. "We haven't in a long time. Thank God. Emmett snores like a bear, and Jasper- he doesn't always sleep that much. Stays up reading or on the computer. And Rose and Alice…. they've got very different definitions of 'messy'. Rose likes everything in its proper place, and Alice's room looks like a tornado ripped through it."

Faintly, I could hear the end of period bell ringing from the school. I resisted the urge to duck down; there was no way anyone would be able to make out who was in this car with the rain, which was now coming down heavier and faster. "Good beach weather," he muttered, and I glanced at him. "Did Mike invite you to that thing? On Saturday?"

He nodded. "He's invited most of the junior class, and a few seniors. Unfortunately, we can't make it." I didn't press the matter. "That's just too bad. I feel like your family must be the life of the party."

He laughed at that- uproariously.

We drifted in and out of conversation for the next forty five minutes. I almost dozed off at one point, lulled by the music and to my horror, the comfortableness I'd settled into around him, for now, in this car- but woke up just in time for him to yank back a hand from presumably prodding me awake. By the second bell, at the end of that period, I was almost reluctant to leave the car, though the rain had faded to a barely there trickle.

"See you tomorrow, I suppose," I schooled my expression into a more neutral one. Edward shook his head. "I won't be here. Emmett and I are going hiking."

"Hm. Don't get eaten by anything," I said carelessly, opening the door and stepping out into the cool afternoon air. "Try not to drown this weekend," he retorted, and we almost exchanged what could have been a friendly grin, before I remembered I had to get to History and slammed the door in his face.

_I can feel you behind my eyes; you've gotten into my bloodstream._

_\- Stateless, 'Bloodstream'_


	6. Chapter 6

_Nine days in between updates. Not bad. Can I get a review if you're still reading?_

CHAPTER SIX

I WAS CONCERNED there would be comments on Friday, if Angela had told everyone she and Edward Cullen had had to take me to the nurse because I was terrified of blood, and that she had then left me with him, for us to do God knew what. But there were none, and I was extremely grateful to Angela for not mentioning it, even to Jess, whom she'd been close friends with since preschool. The only questions I got were about what Edward had wanted in lunch, which I received from Jess during Trig. "He's horrible with Bio," was all I said on it, and she rolled her eyes like she knew I was telling tales.

Lauren, who sat in front of us, glanced back to give me a dirty look like I had cursed Jess out- I ignored it, just like I ignored the sinking feeling in my gut when she stared at me like a dead fly on a wall. I still didn't know what I'd ever done to her, but suspected she still saw me as an outsider; an interloper who'd manage to worm her way into the good graces of her group of friends. Lauren was used to being the center of attention; like me, she was quiet and a bit standoffish, but evidently quite popular, and used to having things her way.

Just like he'd said, Edward and Emmett Cullen were nowhere to be seen all day. Rose, Alice, and Jasper ate lunch alone, the table almost forlornly quiet without Emmett's booming laughter. On the other hand, I did hear Alice and Rose arguing over something- "Rosalie," the tiny girl was snapping when I walked by to buy lunch with Jess and Mike, and only then did I remember that was what Rose was actually short for.

But at our table, the excitement was palpable. Even I found myself smiling. It was almost sixty today, which was warm, sun bathing weather for Forks. Most of my friends were wearing shorts and tee shirts. I wore one of my thinner sweaters. Mike was ecstatic that it was supposed to be actually sunny tomorrow, all day, and even a little warmer to boot. Myself, I was warming to the idea of the beach outing, if the better weather and higher temperatures persisted. I could pretend it was winter in Phoenix.

"Bella, why aren't you sitting with the Cullens?" Lauren asked innocently. She glanced in their direction. "Oh, is Ed not here? Aw. That sucks."

I barely restrained myself from glaring at her.

"I'm just saying," she continued. "Jess says he's practically your boyfriend."

Jess turned bright pink upon seeing the not-pleased look on my face. "No, I _didn't_," she hissed at Lauren. "Lauren, shut up."

The table descended into a stilted silence, and I picked at my pizza for the rest of lunch. I didn't really care what Lauren thought, I insisted to myself. I just didn't want it going around that Edward and I were anything- really, we couldn't even be counted as friends- we were acquaintances, and the only reason I was going to Seattle with him was because I wanted answers about that cold February morning.

I'd reluctantly told Dad about the trip to La Push, and he'd been pushing me to go all week. When I confirmed I'd be there at dinner, he looked pleased, probably because he knew the names and home addresses of almost every kid going, and all their parents by name as well. I told myself he'd be pleased I was no longer going to Seattle alone, too, but knew it was a bald faced lie. Dad might like the Cullens, but I doubted he'd want me alone in a car with any boy for that long. I ate fast and stayed up late in anticipation of being able to sleep in Saturday morning, but I ended up waking up bright and early because it was exactly that… bright. Outside.

I woke up to light streaming in through my lacy bedroom curtains. Warm light. _Sunlight_. I bolted upright in bed and shoved the covers away, stumbling over to the window to push the curtains aside. The sky was blue. Clouds were still in it, but there were large expanses of blue I couldn't remember seeing since Phoenix, which seemed like such a long time ago. I stayed, looking out at that window, for a good five minutes, anxiously waiting for it to start to get overcast again. It didn't. I felt like singing.

We weren't supposed to meet at Mike's parent's store until three, so I spent the morning and early afternoon outside on the front porch, reading and doing homework and enjoying what might have been the first real sunny, dry, warm day this year. Granted, it was still only 'Forks warm'; low sixties, but I'd take it. I wore a short sleeved blouse and rolled up my jeans into capris. I would have liked to try to get away with flats, but if we were going to the La Push beach I knew I should wear some form of sneakers.

I showed up at the Olympic Outfitters a few minutes before one. It was on the outskirts of Forks, a convenient stop for hikers and campers. I'd seen it before, and had one or two vague memories of being inside it with Charlie when I was little, but now I was paying more attention to the tiny parking lot. Judging from the cars, Mike and Tyler were definitely already here. Thankfully Tyler had stopped staring at me guiltily and constantly apologizing by now.

There was a group that had already carpooled gathered around the cars. In addition to Mike and Tyler, Eric, Jess, Angela, Lauren, two other guys named Ben and Conner, and three other girls; Amanda, Jennifer, and Megan. Lauren whispered something to Amanda, who I'd tripped into in Gym last week. Amanda glanced at me dismissively and snickered. I ignored them in favor of Mike, who greeted me with a grin, Jess hovering right behind him. Their fingers were almost brushing, which I hid a smile over.

"Wasn't sure if you'd back out last minute or not," Mike joked. "We're just waiting on Lee and Samantha, and then we can go. You want to ride in my car? We're gonna have to cram like seven people in it, but it's either that or Lee's mom's minivan."

"I already claimed shotgun," Jess interjected, and I laughed. She seemed to relax a little; I wondered if she'd been worried I was annoyed with her about lunch the other day, and Lauren's general bitchiness. But taking it out on Jess would just make her more likely to sympathize with Lauren, and I was not about to get embroiled in that kind of drama for the rest of the school year.

Samantha showed up then, driven over by her mom since she didn't have her license yet, and Lee pulled up in his truck five minutes later, with two other people he'd invited along, a boy named Chris and a girl named Nicole. Every single free space in Mike's car ended up being used. I ended up pressed up against a window, but at least La Push was only fifteen miles away, and we drove with all the windows down. The wind whipped my hair the entire ride, but I didn't mind.

The beaches around La Push weren't traditionally pretty beaches, hence my dissatisfaction with them, but seeing them again with fresh eyes years after I last had, I had to admit they had their own sort of charm. We arrived at First Beach, which was only a mile long but plenty of space for our group. The water was slate grey, but I hadn't really expected anything different. The shore was more rock than sand, making me glad I'd still worn sneakers. The girls in flats and sandals looked to be suffering. There were giant pieces of driftwood everywhere, even whole tree trunks. It was cooler down on First Beach, from the sharp breeze coming off the ocean, and there were pelicans and gulls everywhere.

We made our way to an abandoned fire circle, and everyone split off to collect driftwood to build a fire with. By the time we had a sort of driftwood teepee built, after some trial and error, it was about two. I sat with Angela, Samantha, and Nicole on a driftwood log, Jess, Lauren, Amanda, and Jennifer were on another one nearby. Jess looked desperately as though she'd rather be sitting with us, the quieter, more reserved group, but seemed unable to escape Lauren's court. Mike and Lee approached, Lee with a cigarette lighter I suspected was his own in hand. "Bella's never seen a driftwood fire," he was telling the other boy.

Jess glanced our way. "Oh, Bella, you've gotta see it! They're so pretty!" She took the opportunity to get up and come over to us, urging Lee to light up one of the sticks. He did, and soon blue flames appeared. I stared in shock. It reminded me of some sort of magical, fairy fire.

"It's the salt," Lee said quietly, pocketing his lighter. "Turns them green too."

Mike and Jess sat together on a trunk, and I watched the flames in between snippets of conversation with Angela. After a half hour or so, people started getting restless, and the suggestion went up to hike to some of the nearby tidal pools. I remembered them from hiking with my dad. While I'd hated Forks, I had always looked forward to them, even if I'd fallen in them. Twice.

I immediately joined the hiking group, along with Jess and Angela. Most of the other girls wanted to stay on the beach, given they weren't wearing the shoes for it. Tyler and Eric elected to stay on the beach as well, even more of a plus, as I wouldn't have to deal with any potential awkwardness from either of them as well.

The hike was only ten minutes, at the most, and our pace was slow to begin with, being a bunch of teens talking and laughing and not exactly speed walking through the woods to our destination. It was chilly in the woods, as the trees blotted out most of the sky and sun, and I removed the sweater I'd brought along from around my waist and slipped it on. No one else seemed very bothered by the drop in temperature, but then again most of these kids had practically grown up in these forests. I hadn't been hiking in a long time, so naturally I tripped over almost everything in my path unless I kept my eyes on the ground and didn't look up for any reason whatsoever.

I was relieved when we finally broke free of the forest, shivering happily when I felt the sun on my face once more. We were back on the shoreline, except this spot was full of tidal pools on the banks of the river that rushed into the sea. I'd last seen it when I was maybe eleven or twelve, trailing after my dad. Everyone surged forward all at once, and I waited out the initial rush, and then found a lonely pool to look into while everyone else balanced on rocks and threatened to shove each other in. Mike made like he was going to push Jess, and she shrieked, then burst out laughing.

I made sure to watch my footing, and looked into the water a tiny world teeming with life. Anemones and crabs and starfish and eels and all sorts of things scurried away from my shadow. I trailed my fingers through the water in fascination. I could have stayed there, crouched on a rock, for hours, ignoring the way my legs gradually started to cramp, but after forty minutes or so the others complained they were hungry and the group started making its way back to the beach. I slowly stood up, and my one leg promptly shot out from under me. I landed hard and groaned; my left leg was soaked up to the knee. No one had noticed my slip, luckily, because they were all heading back into the tree line. I scrambled up to hurry after them, only limping the first few steps.

We moved faster through the woods coming back, and I almost fell once more, but steadied myself on a tree. My leg dried quickly, and my one palm was only a little scraped up. When we reached First Beach there were far more people gathered around the fire, which had been built up into a proper blaze, and I quickly realized the new kids were from the reservation, ranging from middle school to college age. The food had been brought out too, and my stomach growled.

Eric seemed to be friends with a few of the guys from the reservation, and was quick to introduce everyone. I prayed he didn't sound weird when he said my name, and to his credit, he pulled it together. One of the La Push kids, maybe a year or two younger, glanced in my direction when he heard my name, and I stared at him for a moment before forming a guess of who he might be. I hadn't seen Jacob Black since we were both in elementary school; Charlie had always tried to get me to play with his older sisters, but we'd never had much in common. Jacob was a year younger, so he had to be about fifteen now.

I grabbed a sandwich and a soda from a cooler, sitting back down with Angela. She was as quiet as usual, which was as relaxing for me as usual, as I didn't have to make conversation while I ate. I had no idea if this counted as late lunch or early dinner, and didn't really care. It got cloudier as we ate, but the sun still bravely peeked through. The large group splintered into smaller parts as people finished their meals. A few went down to the water to try to skip rocks or even wade in with their shoes off and pants rolled up- it sounded like a great way to get hypothermia to me. Some people wanted to go to the tidal pools who hadn't gone before, so another hiking group was forming. Mike and Jess and a bunch of others wanted to drive up to the shop in the village. Tyler had brought a CD player, and Lauren and him slunk off with it, probably, I thought critically, to tune out the sounds of them making out in the back of Lee's truck.

I found myself alone on my log. Angela had gone down to the water, Samantha was leaving on the hike, and Nicole had gone up to the village with Mike and Jess and the rest. Jacob and two other La Push teens were still gathered around the fire. Jacob glanced my way a few more times before getting up and wandering over to where I was sitting. Close up, he looked much younger, because of the baby fat still in his face and his wide, dark eyes. His hair was pulled back in a ponytail. He scuffed at the ground with his sneaker before asking shyly, "Uh, aren't you Bella Swan?"

Thank God. No 'Isabella'. He must have remembered from when we were kids. "Yes," I said more enthusiastically than I normally would have, I was so pleased. "It's good to see you again, Jacob."

"You remembered!" He sounded delighted, and stuck out his hand for me to shake. "Just Jake's fine. So your dad bought my dad's truck for you." I nodded. "It runs great. Are, uh… are your sisters here, too?" I had no idea if I would be able to recognize the twins or not. He shook his head. "Rachel's going to Washington State- she got a scholarship- and Rebecca's in Hawaii. Surfing."

"Woah," I said, impressed. "I mean, good for them. I haven't see them in so long." My memories of Rachel and Rebecca were vague; they'd both been much more outgoing than me, and thick as thieves, which I assumed came with the whole being nearly identical twins. They were two years older than me; both eighteen now.

"I'm really glad your dad bought that old monster," he confessed. "'Cause Dad wouldn't let me work on building anything else when we still had it collecting dust in our garage."

I stared at him. "You build cars?"

He flushed. "Not… not _great_ cars, but I'm pretty good with that sort of stuff. I like, you know, taking stuff apart, seeing how it works, putting it back together better." He sat down beside me tentatively, which helped a lot to even out our heights, because despite his still childish looks Jake was fairly tall for a fifteen year old.

"How do you like Forks?" he asked, and I shrugged. "S'okay. I'm still getting used to it, I guess. Do you come up to the town at all?"

He shook his head. "Once I get my license." I smiled. "Freedom, right? I was ecstatic when I got mine; wasn't going to have to walk everywhere anymore."

Jake laughed and looked around. "We thought there'd be more people when we came down- it's not as big a party as the last one."

I barely held back a snort at the idea of even a bigger group qualifying as party. This was pretty tame, as far as I could tell. I thought I saw a few beers being passed around earlier, but nothing crazy. Then again, I wasn't exactly the expert on parties. This technically counted as my first one. "Mike invited more people, but not everyone could make it. Like the Cullens- do you know them- I think he asked them." I'd half asked just to see what Jake's reaction to Forks' resident weird family was, and he looked away. Oh. This was interesting.

"What?" I asked with a chuckle. "What? Have you met them before?"

Jake flushed and shook his head. "Not… not really. They just…" He glanced around, specifically at the eldest boy from the reservation, who looked around nineteen, but he was talking to a girl. "They're not supposed to come here," Jake confessed.

I stared. Had they gotten into trouble with the Quileute tribe? What could they possibly have done to get banned from La Push? "Since when?" I asked flat out. "I mean... what did they _do_?"

He shook his head again. "That's the thing. They didn't… they didn't actually _do_ anything. It's just some stupid old tribe rule. It's been around for ages." Now I was confused, but I kept my voice hushed. "A rule saying the Cullens, specifically, can't come here?" That made no sense; they'd moved just a few years before I had.

To my shock, he nodded. "I know. It's really just a scary story."

"A scary story," I repeated, my mind racing.

He looked around again, obviously making sure none of the other kids from the reservation were watching us. "I don't want to tell you here… Want to walk down the beach?" Curiosity pushed me forward. "Okay." I got to my feet and followed after him, leaving the fire behind. The strains of 'Let Me Love You', from Tyler's CD player, faded into the distance.

"So you like scary stories, then," he joked when we finally came to halt by a giant driftwood trunk, much further down the beach. I shrugged. "I want to hear this one." Jake and I climbed into the tangle of roots at the base of the trunk, him sitting slightly above me. I stared up at him, anxiously waiting for him to begin. He cleared his throat. "There's a legend that Quileutes descended from wolves, and that's why it's against tribal law to kill them, because they're still brothers to us. And then there's the blood drinkers legend."

I motioned for him to continue wordlessly.

"They say my great-grandfather made the treaty with them, the blood drinkers, demons, vampires, whatever you want to call them, to stay off our land. They were the 'natural enemies' of our ancestors, the wolves that turned into men."

"So… werewolves," I said doubtfully.

Jake laughed. "No, more like shape shifters, or skin changers. Supposedly they could change form at will, not whenever there was a full moon. Normally, the two sides would have fought, but these blood drinkers were different. They claimed they only fed on animals, not humans, so they wouldn't be dangerous to the tribe. My great-grandfather agreed to a truce with them to prevent a war, with the condition that they stay off our lands."

I held up a hand. "Wait, wait. So your tribe thinks the Cullens… are descended from vampires?" Jake grinned. "No. That they _are_ vampires. The same ones we made a treaty with all those years ago. Creepy, right?"

I shook my head, laughing. "Do people really take it seriously? Is this common knowledge?"

Jake smirked. "Only among the Quileutes. And no, most people just think it's a myth. Maybe some of the tribe elders still believe it. But we're not supposed to talk about it, so I didn't want anyone to overhear us and rat me out."

I tilted my head back and stared at the sky, still thinking. "How would that work? Wouldn't everyone notice if the Cullens were vampires? They wouldn't age."

He shrugged. "According to legend they left shortly after the treaty, which was before the white settlers came here, and only recently returned. So no one would remember them besides us."

I rolled my eyes. "Well, I go to school with the Cullens, and they don't have red eyes or fangs." Granted, I'd never seen any of their teeth up close, but… Still. "And they're not burning up in the light."

Jake had yet another answer. "The blood drinkers were only supposed to be in danger in direct sunlight. That's why they came here, where the sun rarely shines." He injected just enough drama into his voice to make us both start laughing again.

But internally I was debating. Edward Cullen was extremely fast, so fast you didn't even see him coming. He was certainly hiding something. His family, though friendly, was still slightly apart from the rest of the town, never quite fitting in with everyone else. His siblings and he were all 'adopted'. What if they weren't? What if they'd been 'created' by Carlisle and Esme Cullen, just not in the traditional sense? I felt slightly queasy. This was stupid. There was no such thing as vampires, but with the way Edward acted sometimes… the lines of reason were wavering for me a little. There was something off about him. Something I wanted him to explain, and he'd agreed to, when we went to Seattle. It sounded like a cheesy movie: "Road Trip with a Vampire".

I came face to face with more facts. The Cullens were constantly 'camping' and 'hiking'. Maybe they weren't. The idea of them out in the woods, biting deer in the neck was absurd, but… I shook my head. No. There had to be a more logical explanation. Jake was looking at me sideways. It was my turn to go red. "Sorry. I sort of got lost in my own head for a minute there."

"I didn't freak you out too much, did I?" he asked worriedly. "Sorry if I got too into the whole scary story thing."

"No," I assured him. "No, that was fine."

"Just… don't tell your dad I told you. He was really annoyed when he heard some Quileutes were refusing to go to the hospital once Dr. Cullen started working there. He and my dad kind of had a fight over it. I think they made up." He stared out at the ocean for a few moments before glancing back at me.

I nodded. "Don't worry. I won't tell him."

"Bella! Belllllaaaaaaaaaaa!" I groaned and stood up at the sound of Jess's yelling, waving at her and Mike, who were walking down the beach towards us.

"Your friends?" Jake asked in amusement. I rolled my eyes. "Yeah."

Jess dashed towards us, dragging Mike along by the hand. "We were looking for you, but no one knew where you went! Not that Tyler and Lauren were much help," she made a sound of disgust, "But we were starting to get freaked out."

"Here I am," I said dryly, as she seemingly noticed Jake for the first time. "Oh! Hi! Uh, Jacob, right?"

He clammed up a little; obviously shy now that he was outnumbered by older teens. "Yeah. We were just telling ghost stories." I appreciated his fibbing.

Mike snickered. "It's not even dark out yet." He glanced up and frowned. "Well, getting there." The sky had darkened considerably while Jake had been telling me the story. Now it looked like it was threatening to rain. I sighed in disappointment. "Is everyone packing up, or what?"

Jess nodded. "You better hurry up if you want a good seat in the car."

I looked back at Jake. "I'll see you around, I guess, once you get your license?" Jake was younger and a little awkward- not that I could talk- but he was fun to talk to, and we got along pretty well together, much better than we ever had as little kids. He jumped down from the root he'd been sitting on, putting up the hood of hi sweatshirt. "Yeah. I'll definitely come visit you and Charlie."

I smiled faintly. "Cool." Then I trudged after Jess and Mike, all the way down the beach to the parking lot. Big, fat, drops of rain were already starting to fall. I scrambled into the back of Mike's car, suddenly tired by the events of the afternoon and evening. By the time we got back to Mike's parents' store, it was pouring, and I had to make a run to the Toy Truck. I listened to the radio all the way home to distract myself, and that night I dreamed about blood spattered trees and the screams of dying animals. I woke up once, shivering, to find I had kicked all my covers off the bed.

_Or maybe I'm a ghost; specter on the wrong course, thorn without a rose, something people fear._

_\- Coldplay, 'Ghost Story'_


	7. Chapter 7

_Summer projects and work have been killing me; sorry for the long wait, everyone. Thank you for your reviews, Woohoo19 and entschen! Thank you for the favorites, Woohoo19 and Tandr23! Thank you for the follows, Woohoo19 and littlelizruth! Next chapter... Port Angeles! Dress shopping! Drama! ...Batman?_

CHAPTER SEVEN

I HAD DIFFICULTY SLEEPING after the nightmare. I tossed and turned for the rest of the night, even with my covers snug around me and the rain having let up to a drizzle. When I finally gave up and looked at my clock, it was five thirty in the morning. Great. Whenever I closed my eyes I saw blood on the leaves and the glassy eyes of dead animals. This was so stupid. I was more unconsciously freaked out by a Native American myth than any other disturbing thing I'd ever heard before, and Arizona had its share of creepy urban legends.

My head ached, and I realized I'd never taken my hair out of the braid it'd been in the day before. I cringed as I untangled it from the pony tail holder and massaged it back into its usual straight curtain. Then I fell back onto my pillow with a grunt, wanting nothing more than to be able to fall back asleep. But I was pretty sure that wasn't happening any time soon. After fifteen to twenty minutes of lying there and trying and failing to doze off, I gave up and sat up in bed. I needed to take my mind off things. Unfortunately, it was Sunday, which meant no school, and Dad never had any Sunday plans. It wasn't as if we went to church. I doubted I'd ever even been _in_ the church in Forks.

I felt sort of grimy and woodsy from yesterday, so a shower seemed in order. A long shower. I stayed in there, under the hot water, for at least ten minutes, which was when the hot water started to run out. Then I got out, and bundled up in towels, rigorously blow dried my hair and clipped it up, sick of it hanging in my face. I brushed my teeth aggressively; even cut my nails. When I was done in the tiny, steamy bathroom I hurried across the cold hall back into my room, peeking out the window to see if Dad was home or not. His cruiser was gone. Out fishing, probably.

I sat on my bed and looked at a magazine while I waited to dry off; I wasn't going to put on clothes while wet. I forced myself into a pair of jeans and a baggy sweatshirt, along with my fluffiest pair of socks. My stomach was rumbling, and it was around seven now. Time for breakfast. I stared at the two boxes of cereal in the pantry before deciding I wasn't even going there. I needed a bigger breakfast today, not just raisin bran. We had frozen waffles. I was making them.

After smothering said waffles in syrup, something I rarely did, I sat down and ate them, slowly. I was in no rush to get on with the rest of the day, and I was in no rush to face what was going on in my head. There was no such thing as vampires. I sounded pathetic, even to myself, like a child trying to convince themselves there were no monsters under their bed. When I was finally done eating I put the dishes in the sink and wandered back upstairs. I felt utterly alone; in this house, and right now, in Forks. What was I supposed to do? Bring garlic to school and accuse Edward of being a blood sucking demon?

I sat down at my desk, and after a few moments hesitation booted up the ancient computer. I owed Mom an email anyways. It took forever and a day to dial up, and when it eventually did I was confronted with a screen full of pop up ads. Silently cursing whoever invented the pop up ad, I painstaking closed each one, before checking my email. Sure enough, one from Mom was waiting, full of more questions and concerns about me and my stay in Forks. I took a while typing up a lengthy reply, answering all of the questions and dismissing all of the concerns, though maybe she had every right to be concerned, if Forks was apparently some sort of supernatural haven.

After I sent the email, I went back and forth with myself, debating over whether to do what had been on my mind since I first turned on the computer: _research_. I gave in, and opened up my search engine.

_vampire_

I felt ridiculous just typing it in. The first things that came up were movies, tv shows, role playing games and comic books, more than one gothic metal band, and a lot of makeup results. I scrolled past them until I got to a site that seemed to actually be taking itself rather seriously: Vampires A-Z.

It took a while to load, while I fidgeted in my squeaky folding chair. I was relieved it was just a simple website layout, nothing flashy. I congratulated myself on having _not_ accidentally stumbled across porn. There were two quotes on the main page.

_Throughout the vast shadowy world of ghosts and demons there is no figure so terrible, no figure so dreaded and abhorred, yet dight with such fearful fascination, as the vampire, who is himself neither ghost nor demon, but yet who partakes the dark natures and possesses the mysterious and terrible qualities of both_. - Rev. Montague Summers

_If there is in this world a well-attested account, it is that of the vampires. Nothing is lacking: official reports, affidavits of well-known people, of surgeons, of priests, of magistrates; the judicial proof is most complete. And with all that, who is there who believes in vampires? _\- Rousseau

The site was a collection of every known vampire myth from the various parts of the world, in alphabetical order. How many different versions of the same nonsense could there possibly be? A lot, it turned out. I clicked on the first, which was the legend of the Filipino _Danag_. The _Danag _worked with the humans to plant taro year after year, until a woman cut her finger and it sucked on the open wound, enjoying the taste of the blood so much that it drained her dry. I felt like throwing up, but forced myself to move onto the next one.

A lot of the myths seemed to be portraying beautiful young women as demons in disguise; an excuse for the infidelity of men throughout the years, and had children as the innocent victims; a reason for such high infant and child mortality rates. Plenty of them seemed to be more about ghosts than vampires in the traditional sense, and there was a lot of discussion of improper burials resulting in the undead. I pictured the Cullens bursting out of the ground and rolled my eyes. This website wasn't exactly helpful; many of the myths didn't even focus on blood drinking.

There was the Romanian _Varacolaci_, which was said to be able to appear as a beautiful pale skinned human. Everyone in Forks was pale. The Cullens certainly didn't all look like supermodels. Rose and Jasper were the only ones I'd really consider 'beautiful'.

The Slovakian _Nelapsi_ was said to be incredibly strong and fast, capable of massacring an entire village of people in just one hour. Edward was fast, true, but I had yet to see any displays of extreme strength.

And the Italian _Stregoni benefici_; the 'good vampire', supposedly the mortal enemy of all evil vampires. Wonderful. Maybe the Cullens were like the Sesame Street version. This is all felt so stupid. I stood up so fast I almost knocked over my chair, and jabbed the power button on the computer, not wanting to bother with shutting it down the long way. The screen went dark, and all I saw was my reflection in it; a long, scowling face.

This was such bullshit. The Cullens were not vampires or ghosts or demons. They were people. Weird, secretive people. This whole town was a freak show, I decided. I sat down on my bed and pulled on my boots. I needed to get out of this tiny house. Obviously it was having a negative effect on my mental health. I stormed downstairs, yanking my jacket on. It was overcast but for the moment not raining. I cut across the tall grass, heading for the tree line, no set destination in mind.

Soon enough the house was invisible through the trees, and the grass had faded into mossy earth coated with slick, dead leaves. There was a trail, of course; otherwise I never would have risked just wandering into the woods. As I began to calm down my furious pace slowed and I took more time to notice my surroundings. The forest was utterly silent, as if watching me in hushed anticipation. Water dripped down from the trees, and I pulled my hood up as I sat down on the damp trunk of a fallen tree. I never should have come here. Vampires seemed much more alive in the shadows of the trees then in my bedroom. Nothing changed here. Life grew up and died and new life grew from it. The same cycle, repeating forever.

I needed to answer my own questions for once. First of all, could that silly myth possibly have any grain of truth to it? Was Edward just a weirdo, or was he legitimately dangerous? Could he be both? But if he was utterly normal, how was I alive right now? That van should have killed me. I should have been died right then and there. It was horrifying, to imagine your own death, but it was true. The only reason I was still living was because of one Edward Cullen, who had somehow crossed the parking lot at practically the speed of light _and_ knocked me out of the van's path like Clark freaking Kent.

Onto the next question. If any of it, _any of it_ was true, what was I going to do? Call the cops? The cops were my dad, and I was pretty sure he would I think I was on some intense high and ship me off to some boarding school for juvenile delinquents. Other than that, my only choice was to then ignore him, to act as though he didn't exist, to tell him I sure as hell wasn't going _anywhere_ with him, never mind Seattle. But then I would never know for sure. And, as crazy as it sounded, he didn't scare me. He'd never scared me. My nightmare… it was fear of the unknown, fear of possibilities, fear of what he might be, what he was capable of. There were no certainties. And I needed to be sure, because otherwise I would always have these 'what if's fluttering around in the back of my head like moths. He was a puzzle. I needed to figure him out, to neatly compartmentalize all his interlocking parts. Besides, I admitted grimly, Forks would be a lot duller if I didn't have a mystery to solve.

_So now you're some Nancy Drew/Buffy combination_, I mocked myself as I slowly stood up. _Great_.

It began to pour in earnest, and I was worried the path would become hard to follow back to the yard in the rain. I hurried, feet slipping and sliding this way and that as the dirt quickly turned to mud. I hadn't realized just how far I'd walked until I was practically running back, tripping over roots and rocks. Was I going the right way? I slowed in a panic, but then heard what sounded faintly like cars passing by in the distance, through the rain, and started to run again. An animal rustled through the brush nearby, and I shrieked in spite of myself, before bursting out of the tree line and back into the yard.

My socks were soaked and plastered to my feet. My hair was tangled in my hood. I trudged back to the house, letting myself calm down, and resolved never to go in those woods again. They were far more trouble than they were worth. Next time I wanted to think, I was putting on some music. Once inside, I realized it was almost noon, as if time had slowed down for me in the forest, but continued on as normal outside it. Since I was apparently contemplating the existence of vampires, I supposed anything was possible.

I felt better, more at ease, now that I had some notion of a plan. I worked on a paper all day, finishing it up by eight. Dad came home shortly after with a giant whopper of a fish; I hope he didn't expect me to cook it anytime soon; I wasn't exactly a five star chef, despite my fledgling skill in the kitchen. I fell asleep very quickly, and didn't dream at all, to my surprise. To my further surprise, I woke up to sunshine and mostly cloudless blue skies for the second time in Forks. Even the existing clouds were like Arizona clouds; white and puffy, not grey tinged and lurking dangerously near the sun.

I opened my bedroom window with a few grunts, and stepped back as dry air wafted into the stuffy room. Dry. Air. Not wet or even damp. It was cool, for sure, but it felt like it could warm up. I didn't even feel much of a breeze. I closed my eyes, and almost felt like I was back home, standing on the patio on a winter morning. Unable to stop smiling, I dressed and got ready in a hurry before rushing downstairs. Dad was finishing a muffin at the kitchen table, and grinned a still boyish, dimpled grin. He didn't smile like that very often, but when he did I always remembered that he really wasn't as old as he seemed; Dad was still in his thirties, after all. While Mom always seemed younger than her age, more like someone wide eyed and fresh out of college, Dad always seemed older, and he was the one who'd always been the oblivious small town boy.

"I figured you'd like the weather today, Bells," he commented, as I poured myself a glass of orange juice. I nodded while I sipped at it. "I _love_ it. I wish it could be like this here all the time." He made a quiet sound of agreement, though I doubted he thought all that similarly. He was probably just glad I was happy for now. I knew he was still paranoid I'd randomly decide I couldn't stand living with him and wanted to go to Mom and Phil in Florida.

I ate my breakfast in contented silence while he pulled on his jacket and wished me a good day, doing a very awkward Dad pat on the shoulder before leaving the house. I debate taking my rain coat with me, and finally, knowing I still couldn't trust Washington weather, shoved it into my backpack before eagerly trotting out into the sunlight. It took a good five minutes to get all the windows in the truck completely rolled down, and I hoped the sun didn't suddenly vanish, screwing me over. I blasted the radio on the way to school, humming along with it exuberantly, even if it _was _Jesse McCartney.

_I don't want another pretty face; I don't want just anyone to hold… I don't want my love to go to waste; I want you and your beautiful soul_…

I was early upon arriving at school, and while I would have just sat in my truck, it was too nice out to waste my precious free time doing that. I hopped out with my backpack, making my way to a bench by the cafeteria, and seeing as the bench was still damp, a reminder that the rain would eventually return, I sat on my bundled up coat. My intent was to look over some of the Trig problems that had been giving me trouble, like a good little student, but I ended up doodling on my homework. At least ten minutes passed, and the parking lot rapidly filled up.

"Bella!" I looked up from my 'work' to see Mike headed my way, in shorts and sandals, because of course this was Forks. We talked about the paper I'd worked on yesterday, which was due Wednesday. Of course, he hadn't started on it yet, and was horrified to learn I was already done, but decided he could try to make a study date out of it with Jess. I wildly encouraged this. Before we knew it, we had to get to class, and reluctantly left out sunny spot for Building Three.

Jess was more cheery than ever in Trig, and determined to talk me into her latest harebrained scheme. She, Angela, and gag, Lauren, were going dress shopping tonight in Port Angeles for the dance, and wanted me to come. Well, she and Angela did. I somehow doubted Lauren was very keen on this. I sighed, frantically erasing my doodles as Mr. Varner came around collecting the homework. "Come on, Bella," Jess insisted. "If you're not coming to the dance, the least you could do is help us get ready for it. Besides, it'll suck if it's just me, Angela, and Lauren. You know Lauren. She'll walk all over Angela, and probably tell me I look hot in something God awful."

I gave Jess a pointed look, and she recanted. "Okay, fine, I'm being a bitch, but I'm still pissed with her. You know she's only dating Tyler until he takes her to the dance, right?"

I sighed. "Fine, I'll come. But leave me out of your fights with Lauren. I don't need her jumping down my throat-," I cut myself off, as Lauren had just returned from the bathroom, and Jess gave me the thumbs up but said no more about it.

As lunch approached, a suspicion that'd been lurking in the back of my mind grew and grew. What with all the craziness yesterday… I couldn't help but think, that with all this sunshine…

"Damn," I said under my breath as we entered the cafeteria. The Cullens were gone. All of them. Of course, there was a reasonable explanation for this; Dr. Cullen liked to take the family out for the day when there was unusual good weather. But there was also a less reasonable explanation, which was of course far more tempting to mull over.

Lunch was a lively affair. Everyone was in high spirits due to the weather and the upcoming dance, and Jess couldn't stop talking about it the entire time. Angela was much more low key, as usual, she and I discussed the now infamous paper. We'd both chosen the same topic: whether Shakespeare's treatment of his female characters was misogynistic or not, and we both tended to agree in some cases but disagree in others.

I sat by myself in Biology, lacking a lab partner, and ignored any feelings of loneliness. Gym was a tolerable Hell; all I had to do was sit there and listen to Coach Clapp go on about the merits of badminton, but next time I'd actually have to play it. Luckily, he was cut off by the bell, which meant he'd have to finish explaining it tomorrow and I had one extra day. I radiated smug satisfaction all the way through American History. Thus far, it had been one of my best days in Forks, ever.

But as soon as I got home, Jess called to cancel the shopping trip, as Mike had asked her out on the previously mentioned study date. They were going to the local diner; not exactly high class romance, but a big deal for her, and I wasn't very disappointed to not have to go out tonight. Said trip to Port Angeles was rescheduled for tomorrow, and I emailed Mom and worked on my homework until around five, when I couldn't focus anymore. I grabbed my copy of _Mansfield Park _and an old battered quilt, before heading into the backyard. I painstakingly spread the ragged quilt over the sunniest patch of grass I could find, wanting to spend the last hour before sunset soaking up as much of the light as possible.

After a half hour of lying propped on my elbows they began to ache, and I rolled over with a sigh onto my back to read like that, until the fading warmth of the sun began to work its magic and I started to doze off. My hair was in a ponytail, which hurt to lie back on, and I drowsily pulled it out before I was out for a good forty minutes. It wasn't a particularly deep sleep, and I was vaguely aware that the sun was setting beyond my closed eyelids, but it wasn't until it had completely sunk behind the tree line that I woke up a bit, as it was starting to get chilly again. Besides, I could hear Dad's cruiser rolling up the driveway.

I redid my ponytail and gathered up the quilt and my book, coming in the backdoor just as he came in through the front. "I've got leftover chili from someone at work," he called as he stepped out of his boots and hung up his gun belt. "Did you want to have that for dinner?"

"Sure," I said, still a little dazed from my nap. "We can have it over spaghetti; it'll be good." We ate a bit later than usual, and in front of the TV, watching a _Friends_ rerun. "Jess- Jessica Stanley asked me to go dress shopping with her and Angela Weber and Lauren Mallory tomorrow night in Port Angeles," I mentioned during a commercial for detergent.

Dad glanced over at me, looking puzzled. "But I thought you weren't going to the dance?" I rolled my eyes a little. "They want my advice for when they're trying stuff on, Dad." He nodded slowly, eyes returning to the TV. "Well, that's fine with me, but remember that it's a school night and it's an hour there and an hour back. I don't want you coming home at eleven."

"I won't," I assured him. "We're leaving right after school. I'll be home by seven at the latest."

It was cooler the next morning, but still sunny, though the sun drifted in and out behind darker clouds than the day before. The Cullens were not present. Clearly, none of them would be winning Perfect Attendance this year. To my delight, it turned out Lauren couldn't come to Port Angeles tonight, as she was stuck babysitting her younger brothers while her parents went to a wake. I was almost excited when school ended for the day and Jess trailed me in her ancient Mercury so I could drop my things and Toy Truck off at home to then ride with her and Angela. I exchanged my old wallet I'd had since seventh grade for a nicer looking purse, and changed from sneakers to flats before leaving.

There was something thrilling about driving past the 'You Are Now Leaving Forks, Come Back Soon!' sign. Jess and Angela evidently felt similarly; she blared on the horn as we passed it, Angela smothering laughter with her hand while I sat in the backseat and shook my head.

_I wake up, it's a bad dream, no one on my side..._

_\- Keane, 'A Bad Dream'_


	8. Chapter 8

_Woah, sorry for the massive delay there. I was on a long end of summer vacation and then back to school kicked my ass. This chapter was also the most difficult to translate from the book into my own writing style, so that was an issue as well. Additionally, I was trying to do some minor editing of previous chapters, and the doc manager kept wonking out. Hopefully everyone still finds it enjoyable. I also noticed there was like a sudden renewed interest in this a month or so ago, where I all of sudden got all these new reviews and follows and faves. I have no idea what brought that on, but it was awesome. Thank you snowflakelover and tunsia for your reviews, ERCommandoTwilight, IngiTeamEdward, elaine67, jenn9394, mums garden, snowflakelover, sshart, tunsia, vivietta, and wegot3boys for your faves, and 88TwiGeek, Arwen-MidnightSun85, Chiromom, ERCommandoTwilight, IngiTeamEdward, JenSing, Joijoi, LaDyKiLlAr, LillyJo, LookingForLions, Miller18, MusetteBlanchard, catherine. .9, elaine67, fflover60, forsey1987, gothgirldms, hikingurl48, louanne61, muffinmom, mums garden, pfkman23, snowflakelover, sshart, tarrilynn, tcszalter, tunsia, wegot3boys, whittamerhope, and yingyanggirl for your follows. _

CHAPTER EIGHT

"IF I WAS A RICH GIRL, _na na na na na na_-,"

Jess's singing was out of tune, at best, but neither Angela nor I really minded as we raced along the highway, windows down, unconsciously bopping to Gwen Stefani. Jess drove like a maniac to boot, and we pulled into Port Angeles just after four in the afternoon, having made very good time on her full tank of gas. You didn't need to fill up very often in Forks. Jess talked the entire drive (when she wasn't singing) about her and Mike's study date. They hadn't kissed, but they hadn't studied much either, and she was pretty sure that they were going to make out Saturday night, and it was going to be _awesome_.

"TMI," Angela groaned quietly at one point, and Jess immediately pounced on her about Eric, whom she didn't seem "that into". Angela muttered that she wasn't, and for the last ten minutes of the drive warded off further questions about who she _was_ into, then. She seemed extremely relieved when we found a place to park and the conversation turned to where to go to look for dresses. Port Angeles was a cleaner and more put together place than Forks, and very obviously a charming seaside tourist trap, complete with boardwalks and gift shops. Jess and Angela were extremely familiar with it, however, and they made a beeline for the biggest store in town, beyond the boardwalks and strolling visitors.

"The dance is semiformal," Jess complained as we went in, "Whatever _that_ means."

"No floor length gowns, but no showing up in jeans and a tee shirt," Angela clarified.

"I've never been to a dance before," I shrugged, as we headed for the juniors section. Jess snorted. "I'm not surprised; no offense, Bella." I looked down my nose at her but ignored the comment, turning my attention to the dress racks. I figured by now I had an idea of what at least Jess liked; I was less sure with Angela. For the most part I sat in a chair outside the dressing room offering my critiques of each dress they tried on.

Angela very quickly found a dress she wanted; a sleeveless, peachy pink, lace number with a silver belt that accentuated her slender waist. The color brought out the honey blonde highlights in her light brown hair, and it was short enough to show off her long legs without being too short.

Jess couldn't decide between a slightly longer, strapless black dress with a swishier skirt that flared out slightly when she spun, and an asymmetrical, electric blue, knee length dress that showed off her curves and made her eyes look like they were glowing. "The blue," Angela and I both said almost immediately.

Finding clothes with them was much quicker and less stressful than looking for things with Mom, who flitted from one section to another and often changed her mind while on the checkout line.

We headed to the shoes and accessories department, and Jess and I had to talk Angela into trying on high heels; she usually didn't wear them, being so self conscious about her height. "You look hot, Angie," said Jess perkily, "So why not?" She settled on a pair of nude pumps, while Jess found some rhinestone costume jewelry to match her dress.

Our shopping had taken far less time than anyone had expected; only about forty five minutes, and it wasn't even five o'clock yet. We'd been planning to eat at a tiny Italian place situated on the boardwalk, but no one wanted to eat this early or return home, so now we had time to kill.

Jess and Angie wanted to go back to the car to put their purchases away, and then walk down to the shore, but I wanted to find a bookstore. Port Angeles had to have one, right? Of course they offered to go with me, but they clearly had no idea how boring being stuck with me in a bookstore was.

"No, you two go down to the beach. Just give me directions and I'll be fine," I assured them. I liked to shop for books alone, anyways. Otherwise I felt like I was being scrutinized. Jess gave me general directions on how to get to the store, and we parted ways, heading in opposite directions.

The bookstore in question was not hard to find, but I didn't even go in, just stood outside and stared, taking in the dream catchers and crystals displayed in the front windows, along with books with titles I'd never heard of, and which certainly weren't on the New York Times Best Sellers list. An older woman in her fifties with stringy gray hair down to her waist was behind the counter inside, in a flowy dress that looked straight out of the sixties. I turned on my heel and marched off. There had to be more than one bookstore in Port Angeles.

Two more streets of shops, and no bookstores. I turned a corner, hoping to get lucky, and found only a repair shop and several spaces up for rent. I'd passed all the crowds, and the end of the work day traffic, and now I was in a slightly seedier, residential area.

I paused by a chain link fence to regain my bearings, having gone further from the shopping area than I intended. I was no stranger to cities; I'd grown up in one, and I knew how to get around them without getting myself in trouble. My best bet was to go back the way I'd came and make my way to the bay, where Jess and Angela had gone.

I turned around and started back down the street I'd just come down, but slowed at the sound of loud voices coming around the corner. It sounded like a few men, and I was right. Four came around the corner, laughing and speaking with one another in tones that told me they were probably at least a little drunk. When I said 'men', I meant it more figuratively than anything else, as none of them looked any older than twenty.

I crossed to the opposite side of the empty street, not even glancing their way, but they slowed as they caught sight of me, like I had screamed their names. "Hey, sweetheart," one called, and I stiffened, but kept walking, hunching my shoulders reflexively and keeping my head down. I could only remember being catcalled once before, when I was fourteen, and being so frightened by it that I ducked into a shop and stayed there for the better part of an hour.

"Come on, don't be like that! Can't we get a smile?" Another yelled after me, as the rest snickered, but I was already rounding the corner and out of their line of sight. I was relieved we weren't headed in the same direction, but I quickened my pace anyways, heart beating a little too fast. The street I was on was still too quiet for my liking; there was one parked car and no other signs of life. It was just starting to grow dimmer; the sun had long since hid behind the clouds, but now dusk was beginning to set in. Goosebumps were erupting on my bare arms, and I remembered that I'd forgotten my jacket in Jess's car.

I was passing the parked car when I heard footsteps behind me, and turned slightly to see two of the four men I'd just passed rounding the corner. _Are you kidding me?_ They'd doubled back just to follow me. I guess I was lucky there had obviously been some disagreement, and only half the group was there. My grip on my purse tightened, but I doubted they'd doubled back because of that. I started fast walking now, and glanced back to see them speed up as well. I was a horrible runner, not even counting the clumsiness, and stopping to confront them seemed like a bad idea, so I kept a steady pace and hoped they'd get bored or I'd be able to lose them at some point. I had to keep heading back towards the busier streets.

My pepper spray was in my room at home, I reminded myself grimly, just as two more familiar figures came out of the intersection ahead of me, cutting off my exit from the street. "Miss us, baby?" one leered, while the other dissolved into drunken laughter. I had nowhere to go. This couldn't be happening. I'd already had my near death experience, and now I was going to die on a _dress shopping trip_? Mom had made me take a few self defense classes in middle school, and they vaguely came flooding back to me now. _Make noise_.

"SOMEONE HELP ME!" I screeched. "HELP!" I sounded hysterical, like a character in a movie, to my disgust. Unfortunately, my screaming like a banshee didn't seem to frighten anyone off, though they looked alarmed and surprised that I was making so much noise. They'd probably pegged me as an easy target; a quiet looking teenage girl who obviously didn't know the area.

"We just wanted to have some fun!" One lunged forward. I screamed again, and tried to dart away from him, but his hand closed around my wrist. He yanked me back by it, laughing, and I turned my wrist frantically in his grip and bent my arm at the elbow, jerking away from him. Realizing he could easily just grab me again and more securely this time, I kicked out wildly, wishing I hadn't changed my shoes to flats, and hit his kneecap.

He staggered for a split second, and I bolted, but another managed to grab me by the hair and pulled viciously, turning me towards him. "Let… go!" I yelled, trying to slam the palm of my hand into his nose, but the one I'd just kicked wrapped a thick arm around my waist, easily lifting me a few inches off the ground. "Settle down!" he ordered angrily. His words were slightly slurred.

At that point I went into complete panic mode, screaming and kicking and hitting wildly, and then there was the roar of an engine and blinding headlights washed over all of us. The guy holding me by the waist let me go very quickly, and the one gripping my hair backed off. The other two men, who'd been lingering in the background like wolves, immediately took off, leaving me with the more aggressive two, and an approaching car that didn't look to be stopping. Having no intentions of almost dying via car once more, I dove out of the way as it abruptly swerved to brake in front of us, the passenger side door closest to me. As I scrambled backwards on the gravel, I realized the car was a familiar silver color.

_No freaking way_.

Edward Cullen got out of the driver's side, slamming the door behind him. I'd never seen anything on a human being like the look on his face at that very moment. If an expression could scream 'you're all about to die', that was it. He walked around the front of the car, and while I wouldn't have expected two twenty year olds to look scared of a sixteen year old boy, they did. They looked terrified. I assumed it was the expression on his face and the way he was moving; not even angrily, but with such purpose that you couldn't help but feel that things weren't going to go well for anyone in his way.

He completely ignored the two remaining men, instead stalking over to where I as I slowly got to my feet.

"Are you okay?" His voice was shaky; I wasn't sure if he was trying to restrain himself from losing it or was just that deeply concerned. I tended to think it was former.

"Uh," I said blankly, still internally panicking.

"Can you get in the car?" he asked.

I nodded and practically tripped over myself getting into the Volvo, closing and locking the door after myself. I slid down in the seat until I could barely see out of the window, worried the remaining guys would get over their initial fear, beat the ever loving shit out of Edward, and then try to get me out of the car.

But there was no screaming or yelling, or even sounds of movement, until the sudden crunching of gravel made me jump and then exhale in relief when Edward opened the driver's door and got into the car. I chanced a look back out my window. The two men were still there, just staring at us.

"Please drive," I said quickly. "I want to- We need to go."

He glanced over at me, and then silently nodded, and proceeded to turn the car back around far too quickly, the tires practically screaming, and accelerated back towards the main streets and the bay. I nearly threw up right then and there and instead proceeded to put on my seatbelt with shaking hands. We took a few sudden turns, and when Edward blew through a stop sign I cursed in shock and he seemed to take notice and slowed.

"They're not following us!" I snapped wildly, while looking back over my shoulder just to be sure, though by now it had gotten too dark to really see from inside the car. "I know," he muttered, scanning up and down the street.

"You need to find a place to park," I said hoarsely, swallowing back bile. "Now. I have to throw up."

"You- wait, what?" He found a spot and parked so fast it was as if we'd fast forwarded. I hurriedly unlocked the door and shoved it open to retch all over the curb, to the disgust of a few passing pedestrians. They probably thought I was drunk. I felt drunk. I retched again, then gagged and wiped at my mouth, breathing heavily.

I could feel Edward's presence right behind me and the ghost of a hand on my shoulder, before I jerked away, only to fall back into the seat, slowly pulling the door closed. "Sorry." I was too overwhelmed to be embarrassed right now.

"It's… it's fine." He kept his eyes firmly on the steering wheel and not on me. I coughed a little, and then turned to look at him.

"It's _not_ fine. _I_ almost got... I mean…. what was that?! Are you Batman?! You come roaring up out of nowhere, and then you're just 'Hello Bella. Can you get in the car?'," I imitated his voice slightly hysterically, and went on, "What were you even _doing_ here? Just driving around the streets of Port Angeles on the _day_ I happen to be going there with Jess and Angie?"

Now Edward was staring. "I just _saved your life_. Again." He looked at me as if I'd turning into a raving lunatic, and maybe I had, but I wasn't done.

"How did you know I'd be here?" I hissed. "I sure didn't tell you."

He looked uncomfortable. "It's a small school. Everyone knew you were going to be here tonight. I- I swear I didn't follow you here. I-,"

"No," I snapped. "There is no possible coincidence in the history of coincidences that would have you have some reason to be in Port Angeles at the same time as us and just happen to see me-," I cut myself off, trying not to lose it, caught between wanting to burst into tears and scream my head off.

Edward obviously saw this based on my expression and began speaking very rapidly in what he probably assumed was a soothing tone. It just set me more on edge. "Alright. You're right, okay? I'm not going to lie to you. But right now we need to find Jess and Angela."

He mentioned nothing about calling the police, for which I was grateful for. I couldn't even think straight right now, never mind recount what had just happened to an officer. Who, I thought in my paranoid state, might even be familiar with the surname 'Swan' as that of the police chief in little rinky-dink Forks. Dad could never know anything about this night or I'd never be allowed out of the house again.

"Bella, do you know where Jess and Angela might be?" He had his eyes closed, like he was fighting off another migraine.

"Down at the bay," I supplied, and he nodded. "Is it alright for me to drive?"

My nausea had faded and I didn't think I was going to puke again. I felt numb, though, and sort of as if I was watching myself like a ghost, disconnected from my own body. That way I could assure myself that the girl with the tangled hair and gravel stuck in her clammy palms was not at all me, and I was just watching a movie. I nodded slowly.

Before I had felt like we were fast forwarding, but now it was as if we were in slow motion. As Edward gingerly pulled out of the space and started driving again, much slower now, I stared out the window into the darkness, not seeing anything but my own expression. I didn't recognize the look in my eyes at first, and screwed my eyes shut, shaken.

I didn't open them again until the car almost came to a stop in the middle of the street. I glanced over at Edward to see him rolling down the window. _It's the guys_, I thought in a panic, and pressed myself up against my own door, trying to duck down.

"Jessica! Angela!" he yelled, and I looked back up, hearing Jess call back "Ed Cullen?!" in a startled tone. They were on the sidewalk, presumably on their way back from the bay. "Bella's in the car with me!" he yelled again, and I waved weakly in their direction. I could just make out Jess and Angie exchanging looks before rushing over as Edward pulled into an open space. I got out of the car slowly, leaning against the outside of the door for a moment before making my way onto the sidewalk.

Jess hugged me extremely tightly as soon as I was within her reach, and I nearly flinched, but forced myself to stand there as she let go and looked me over. "Where the hell did you go?! We went down to the bay and waited around and you never showed! Then we went to the bookstore and you weren't there, either!"

Angie looked concerned as well. "How'd you run into Ed?"

I froze, and tried to explain, but couldn't get any words to come out. They clogged up in my throat and my cheeks burned.

"She got lost," Edward replied steadily, looking to me for a hint to how much he should reveal. "And I just happened to be driving by. I was looking for a certain café, and I got a bit turned around myself."

I latched onto this excuse like a life line, but wondered in the back of my mind why he was so much better at lying to my friends than he was to me. "I was freaking out," I mumbled. "I completely missed the bookstore and ended up on some random dead end street."

They both looked appeased, Jess smiling a little in relief and teasing, "I thought you were a city girl, Bella! Port Angeles is teeny compared to Phoenix!"

I shrugged vaguely, feeling myself calm down since I didn't have to confess everything to Jess and Angie. "Good thing Ed was there," Angie added, and I found myself muttering, "Good thing." Edward and I strategically avoided each other's gazes.

"Well, let's go eat then!" Jess exclaimed. "Ed can come along. You're hungry, right?" This was directed at both him and me. He nodded, while I found myself both not hungry at all yet somehow starving at the same time. "Sure," I finally managed. "Let's go."

La Bella Italia was nearly empty, as tourist season had long ago come and gone in Port Angeles. The hostess was tall and leggy, with dyed blonde hair revealing dark roots. She glanced over us, four teenagers, somewhat dismissively, though her eyes lingered on Edward for a moment, as if she was trying to gauge whether or not she found him attractive enough to bother flirting with. "Table for four?" she asked in a bored tone.

Jess shot her a covert glare, but nodded, taking the lead, Angie right behind her, Edward and me trailing after. She led us to a booth, and we awkwardly slid into the seats. Somehow I ended up on the inside next to Edward, Angie directly across from me and Jess next to her. "Your server will be with you in a moment," the hostess informed us, before trotting off.

I buried my nose in a drinks menu, though I knew I'd only end up ordering a water. Which I did, when the server, who had short black hair and a stud in her nose, arrived. Everyone else ordered sodas, while I gulped down a glass that was mostly ice. It made me shiver violently.

"Do you want my jacket?" Edward muttered to me while Jess described how the bay had looked as the sun went down, and I shook my head almost as violently as I had shivered. No, I did not want his _jacket_. The waitress, whose nametag labeled her as Amber, returned with everyone else's drinks and a basket of breadsticks. I snatched one, not caring about looking rude. The smell of baked bread had awoken my appetite.

"What can I get you guys?" the waitress asked, glancing around the table. Unfortunately, she looked to me first, and I squirmed in my seat, before ordering the first thing I saw on the dinner menu. "The pumpkin ravioli, please." I still felt like I was freezing.

"The pasta fagioli," Edward said, pronouncing the Italian perfectly, because of course. Jess ordered the minestrone soup, and Angie the margherita pizza. I chomped on a breadstick while Jess made lively conversation, though she was obviously slightly uncomfortable at Edward's presence. Angie was as silent as ever, and kept glancing at me worriedly. I ignored her stares and kept my eyes on the initials carved in the wood of the table. Our food came back very quickly due to lack of other patrons in the restaurant, and we didn't linger as long as we would have had it just been the three of us girls.

Back out on the sidewalk, night had well and truly settled in, and due to the lights and pedestrians, I could almost imagine I was back in Phoenix, except for the cold and the considerably smaller amount of traffic. "We'd better get heading home." Jess sounded regretful; she obviously loved being away from Forks, and I shared the sentiment.

Edward nodded, and took a step away from me, having been standing intrusively close. I folded my arms over my chest. "Right," he nodded. "I should get going too. Nice to see you three."

I chewed on my lower lip as he started off down the sidewalk towards his car, then glanced back at Jess and Angie, then back to him. "Edward!" I called after him, and he stopped and turned, looking taken aback. I took a few steps towards him. "We need to talk," I said in a quieter voice. He nodded, rubbing the back of his head. "Seattle, Bella."

I glanced again back at Jess and Angie, who looked like they wanted popcorn to accompany their private viewing. At least I didn't think they could really hear what we were saying. I shook my head. "No. Now. I'll catch a ride home with you."

He blinked. "I don't- that might not be the best idea."

"I don't really care." I darted back to where Jess and Angie were standing, frozen. "I'm going to get a ride home with Edward." Angie looked like she was about to say something but stopped herself, and Jess grinned widely and nodded. "Sure, sure. Have fun," she giggled, and I looked away before turning on my heel and walking back to where Edward was. "Okay. Let's go."

"Sure thing, Bella," he muttered under his breath with what might have been sarcasm. I ignored him and got in the passenger's side, exhaling slowly as I shut it behind me. I looked over at him as he got in, cranked up the heater, and started the car. He met my gaze, and I realized this might have been the closest to truly frightened I'd ever seen him.

_Where do we go when the streets are calling? How do we know when we reach our falling?_

_\- Kensington, 'Streets'_


	9. Chapter 9

_HAPPY EARLY HALLOWEEN! Hope everyone enjoys the weekend. This chapter is probably the darkest so far, and it might be kind of upsetting for some of you, especially in contrast to the one in the book. Anyways, thank you, everyone, for your continued support of this story. Your reviews and faves and follows mean a ton to me. Thank you muffinmom, AshesAshes83, jansails, and snowflakelover for your reviews, marley01, mads410, boopwip, Uggy, Ticcing Bat, and SaffyAngel for your faves, and susanpr, sparkinside, marley01, kneon, jeasterl, jansails, froj, fiftylovercg, blackagurl, WingsOfEyeliner, UnxpctdDelirium, Uggy, Ticcing Bat, SunflowerFran, SaffyAngel,Myrtle Mize, Madmum, DeLotto, and DICATAKADD for your follows._

CHAPTER NINE

EDWARD LOOKED AWAY as he pulled out of the space, and didn't look back at me as he drove slowly down the street, in stark contrast to his breakneck driving previously. "Do you feel any better now than you did earlier?" he finally asked after almost a minute. "We can stop by the police station if you want."

"No," I said immediately, tensing against my seat belt. "No cops. My dad- he would never let me out of his sight again if he found out about this." Besides that, I didn't feel like talking about what had happened. Not now, and probably not ever.

He sighed quietly. "Bella, you can't… They should be reported. Those guys-," His tone sharpened. "People like that- they'll go after someone else."

I bridled at what I saw as the insinuation that it was somehow my responsibility to personally testify at their trial or something. What did he think this was, _Law and Order_? "Then you report them anonymously, if you want! I'm not… It's over now, and that's all I care about." My voice shook a little, at the end, to my dismay.

Edward's tone softened and some of his anger seemed to dissipate. "Alright. I understand."

"You _don't_ understand," I snapped in outrage. "You could never understand. I was _terrified_. I could have ended up dead in some _ditch_. _You_ could have been killed-," I stopped myself. He was staring at me.

"You were worried for me?" he asked in a peculiar tone, his eyes darting this way and that like he was trying to do complicated math in his head.

"I was worried for myself that they might decide to beat you to a pulp and drag me out of the car," I retorted, but my gaze flickered away from him uncomfortably. "I- we need to stop talking about this."

"Agreed." He sounded relieved.

I shook my head. "No, I mean- back to the matter at hand! You; why were you in Port Angeles? How did you know where I'd be?"

Edward made a noise of frustration. "Bella, trust me when I say this, you don't want or need to know. Please." His grip on the steering wheel had tightened; I watched the way his knuckles shifted under the skin with a nauseous sense of curiosity before glaring at him.

"That's just the thing, Edward. See, I don't trust you. At all. To be blunt, you're sketchy beyond belief. You do and say weird things. You lie, all the time. Your whole family seems off. You save my life and then act like you committed a war crime. You avoid me for a month and then you're right at my side like we're attached at the hip. I give you _migraines_. Should I list anything else, or will that be sufficient?" I asked sarcastically. "If you don't want questions, then why the hell would you put yourself in the position to be asked them?"

"Because I don't want you to get hurt!" he exploded. "Bella, I know. We are _not_ friends. But I am _trying_. I've been trying since the day we met, to…" He trailed off, breathing heavily. "I'm going to hell," he abruptly said, more to himself than to me. "Dear god, I am going to hell. Jesus. Okay. Let's get this out of the way one last time: Do I scare you?"

"I'm concerned for your mental health," I vouched. "But we've been over that before." I regarded him warily. We were about to leave the streets of Port Angeles and turn onto the exit that would take us back onto the highway. Edward slowed down enough that I thought he was about to pull over, then seemed to change his mind at the last minute and sped up randomly. I flattened myself against the seat and prayed angrily, then turned my attention back to him.

"Fine," he was saying, sounding almost annoyed with me for not answering affirmatively while quivering in terror. "Fine. You deserve the truth, I suppose."

"Imagine that," I muttered under my breath. "Lowly Bella Swan, deserving of the truth."

"Please be quiet, this is sort of difficult," Edward snapped. "I'll start with the easy bit first. Alright. Simply put, I can read minds."

I scoffed. He scowled. I kept my lips zipped tight. Better to hear all of this.

"Not- not the way you think. It's like- like radio stations. I can tune into the ones around me. Get far enough way, they're no longer available; replaced by other ones instead. Some are loud and clear, some are soft and harder to understand. Some are a jumbled mess. Some are just… _unpleasant_. And not… Not literal thoughts, like reading a book. Sort of… themes, ideas. I might be able to know someone is thinking about what they had for lunch, but not exactly what they ate and when they ate it. It's generally easy enough to tune most people out, unless they're extremely anxious, or scared, or upset by something they can't get out of their head."

He glanced sideways at me. "You… you have no frequency. Nothing but silence. Not even dead air; it's like your mind just has this _wall_ up. Or is in some code I can't even _hear_."

I felt my stomach turn over, but could think of nothing to say. I simply listened.

"That was unnerving enough to me, when I met you. But I could have ignored it; grown used to it. It was even… refreshing, to not even have to actively _not_ listen. It was one less station. You're right. There was no reason for me to be in Port Angeles. I was out by myself. In the car, on an empty road… there's no chatter to tune out. I do get migraines, sometimes, from the noise. Not nearly as bad as they used to be, but…," he sighed.

"I was close enough to Port Angeles to be able to hear… the louder signals. I heard… them. Snippets of what they wanted, anyways. What they were planning. I've heard things like that… before, but I promised- I promised I wouldn't do it anymore but-," His voice had trailed into an almost penitent whine.

"I didn't know it was you. I knew it was a girl, and she was in trouble, and they were- more vile than most. So I drove, and I recognized you, and then it was even worse, because I _knew_ you, and _you_ especially… I hadn't gotten that angry in a long time. It threw me off. So I… well, you know the rest."

I looked down at my lap for almost a minute before asking quietly, "Is that all?" without looking back up. I could almost hear him swallow. "No."

"Well, are you going to tell me the rest?"

"I don't know. …Do you believe me?"

I shrugged numbly. "I don't know what to believe. Tell me the rest."

"I can read minds because I'm… not like everyone else." His voice shook, and he tensed and relaxed his grip on the steering wheel every few seconds.

I nodded, but I wasn't sure if he saw. "…I know. …I heard about the Quileute legend."

"And you believed it." It was more of a statement than a question.

"…I thought about it, is all," I said quietly. "A lot. But it didn't… I couldn't make it fit entirely with you and your family."

He snorted. There was no real humor in it. "Things were bound to get mixed up, after all that time."

I felt like I was in a waking dream, and wondered why that feeling was all of a sudden much more common for me since moving to Forks. In Arizona, this would have been laughable; someone basically confessing to being a monster. Here, it was far less funny. I briefly debated how fast I could unbuckle my seatbelt, get the door open, and jump out. Probably not fast enough.

"So… You're a vampire. You drink blood." I was shocked at how calm and flat my own voice was; he sounded like he was struggling to laugh or cry. I hoped he didn't go into hysterics.

"If I don't, I'll go insane," he finally said, matter of factly, bitterly.

"Animal blood?" I questioned, and couldn't stop myself from holding my breath, a slight hitch in my tone.

"Dad would never let us try human blood. Any of us. Even blood from the hospital. It'd be like… like a drug. Once we tried it, we'd never want to stop." He closed his eyes for a moment, and I was grateful the road was empty at the moment, because otherwise I'd be worried we'd drift into oncoming traffic. Maybe he was debating doing just that.

"You really call him Dad? Dr. Cullen?" was all I could think to ask, of the millions of questions I could have.

"He's been my father for a long time. I was his first child." Edward exhaled steadily. "Then he created Esme, then Rose…. then Emmett. Alice and Jasper came much later."

"So you're not siblings." I felt like I was going to vomit again. It was like something out of _Frankenstein_. The mad doctor playing God, creating life from the dead. Carlisle Cullen had made himself a wife, children. You could say he'd practically stitched a family together, though I had no idea what even went into 'making' a vampire.

"We… grew up together, in a way. If I could pick any people on the world to be my family, it would be them."

"Why animals? Why don't you just hunt humans?" He shot me a sideways look, at that particularly bold question, and I stared back, riveted.

"Dad's a doctor. He's been a doctor, for a long, long time. Human life is precious to him. He never could bring himself to…. hurt someone else like that. He didn't want to be a monster."

_But you are monsters_, is what I wanted to say. _You can't change that_. But I wasn't stupid enough to argue with a vampire that in reality he ought to be going after people instead of stray dogs or deer.

"You can live off animal blood?" I asked instead, suddenly painfully aware of my pulse throbbing in my neck, in my wrist, the heart under frail tissue and bone pumping blood.

"Any blood will do. Most like us prefer human. It's what we're suited to. Animal blood doesn't… _call_ to us, I guess you could say. But we can survive on it." He recounted it as describing the symptoms of a particularly nasty illness, and I supposed it was comparable to that. I sank into a deep silence, feeling as if I was being pulled under by quicksand. This was insane. He could be lying about everything. He could be some sociopathic murderer. I had yet to actually see any definitive proof of anything.

"So whenever you're gone from school…. you're hunting?" I blurted out.

Edward nodded silently, then spoke. "We do camp, and hike. But we have to feed. Not every single day, and we can always head into the forest anytime we're not in school, but when it's especially hard to… when…," His voice cracked and for a moment I thought he might start crying, just to make this whole situation even more absurd. But I saw no tears running down his face, and he seemed to compose himself.

I opened my mouth to speak, and then paused. I had so many questions, but I couldn't keep firing them off when I still didn't know for sure. What was I going to do, ask him for a demonstration? "How can I believe you?" I asked, and cringed, instantly wondering why I'd said that aloud.

He was quiet for a few moments and then abruptly pulled over onto the side of the road. My mind kicked back into panic mode instantaneously. _Oh my god oh my god I am going to die he's going to rip my throat out and dump my body in a ditch oh my god_-

He looked over at me, opened his mouth wide as if at the dentists, and flashed his teeth in a grimace. I stared in a mixture of confusion and relief for a moment; they looked perfectly normal, and then they _didn't_ and I slammed my back into the passenger side door with a shriek. What I did not see, in case you were wondering, were two mild little elongated canines. The closest thing that you could visualize easily that I could describe them as akin to would be the teeth you find in a shark's mouth. As it rips you apart.

This naturally induced a panic that, much like earlier, shut down all my thinking processes except fight or flee. I apparently chose to fight, because I swung my legs up in between him and me in a hurry, and consequently, and mostly on purpose, I kicked him in the face with a solid cracking noise

He yelled something unintelligible while I screamed, "GET OUT! GET OUT! JESUS CHRIST, GET THE HELL OUT!" He was out of the car before I could land another kick, and I bravely lunged forward and slammed the driver's door shut, locking it and double checking my own door.

What followed was at least ten minutes of me sobbing hysterically in the car, my head between my knees, while he paced around outside the car and eventually sat down in the headlights, his head similarly between his own knees, rocking back and forth. It would have almost been comical, both of us having our own meltdowns in tandem, screaming and crying, had he not been a bloodthirsty vampire and had I not been convinced I was losing my mind.

Before, my life had seemed like some vaguely sad indie film. Now it appeared determined to be a horror movie. My sobs died down to whimpers and then to silent tears, and when they ran out I took stock of my situation and what I knew to be true.

First of all, I was locked in a car on the side of a lonely stretch of highway with a potentially murderous vampire whose nose I had very likely just broken right outside and no way to call for help. Secondly, said vampire had saved my life earlier and thus far showed no inclination to harming me, but was also disturbingly emotionally unstable at the moment. Thirdly, said vampire claimed to live off of animal blood, so in theory I should be safe. Fourthly, said vampire was my ride home and the whole thing had been my idea. I wasn't really sure what I had expected. A calm and logical discussion about the supernatural?

I lifted my head up and rubbing at my eyes, stared at Edward, who was staring back at me from several paces away in front of the car. I promptly scooted over into the driver's seat, and waved him towards the passenger side window, which I rolled down just enough to facilitate conversation.

"Okay," I ground out. "Give me one good reason why I should let you back in this car."

"I'm sorry," he said simply. "I didn't know how else to show you."

Against my better judgment, and because a car door probably wasn't going to stop a vampire anyways, I unlocked the door, and he got in. I pulled back onto the road, and we continued on our tension filled way. I eventually glanced over at him, specifically at his nose, trying to gauge if I had actually broken it or not. "Did I…."

"It's fine now," he said gruffly. "I don't stay hurt long."

"You can't die." I almost felt as if I was correcting him.

Edward laughed, and this time there was actual amusement in it. "Trust me, Bella. I can die."

I frowned. "But not naturally?"

He shrugged. "Not from old age or disease, if that's what you mean. Vampires aren't indestructible. We tend to think we are, because we're much hardier than humans… But we're not."

I found myself smiling wanly in spite of myself. "So… garlic, does that work?"

He snorted. "No. At least, I've never met a vampire it worked on."

I pondered that for a moment. "Alright. And you can come out during the daytime?"

"It depends. Naturally, we're nocturnal, but only direct sunlight can hurt us. An overcast day is fine. That's why before we lived in Alaska… we took a risk, coming further south again."

For some reason all I saw was the Cullens huddled inside an igloo, and almost broke into borderline hysterical giggles. "Do you burst into flames in the sun?"

Edward frowned. "No. But it's not pretty."

"And you don't sleep in coffins," I commented dryly.

He exhaled in amusement. "Correct. We sleep just like everyone else."

"But you're dead, aren't you?" I asked, hating myself for the curiosity seeping through my tone. This was not show and tell, though it seemed to have turned into a particularly twisted version.

"I'm not dead," he groaned. "Why does everyone- Vampires aren't dead, Bella. You can't change a dead person. I'm alive. I've always been alive. I'll just never die. I'm not… reanimated, I'm _always_ animated. Frozen in time, you could call it. I was turned when I was seventeen. I'll never be any older than this, physically or mentally."

That sounded horrific to me. Forever stuck in puberty… What a nightmare.

"How long have you been seventeen?" I asked as if inquiring what his favorite color was.

He looked grim again. "Eighty seven years."

"_Eighty seven_-," I quickly did the math in my head. "You're _one hundred and four_?"

"I'm seventeen," he insisted. "Does it look like I have dementia? I've been seventeen since 1918. I'll be seventeen for a long, long time."

"How old is the rest of your family?" I demanded.

He rolled his eyes. "Are you really going to make me- Fine, Bella."

"Carlisle was turned sometime in the 1640s. He's much older than the rest of us, and he's the creator of the coven."

"The coven?"

"The family. He estimates he was about twenty six when he was turned. He's from London, originally. So he's roughly 380 something years old. Esme was turned in 1920… no, 1921. She was twenty seven, I think. She's 111. Rose was twenty one when she turned; she's 93. Emmett's only 89, he was about nineteen when he was turned… I'm not as sure about Alice and Jasper. I think Alice is around a century old, and Jasper is much older, maybe 160."

We settled back into silence, uncomfortable on both our parts, for a long while as I let that sink in. I mindlessly reached over and turned on the radio on low at some point to alleviate the tension. Somehow, Usher didn't help much.

_I don't know what it is, but it seems she's got me twisted…_

"Edward?" I asked eventually.

"Yes?" he answered warily.

"Why me?"

"What do you mean." His mild tone completely shut down; it was like listening to a robotic recording.

"There's obviously… you seem a bit obsessed with me?" Why was I asking this. Why was I asking this.

I glanced over at him. His head was in his hands. "It's not you," he muttered. "It's never been you. It's…"

"What?"

"It's your blood."

I nearly slammed on the brakes; instead I gunned it, as if hoping to somehow escape him, despite the fact that he was in the same car as me.

"Bella, stop!" he gasped, and I shook my head, blowing by an exit. "You said you only drank animal blood! What the _fuck_, Edward!" I was starting to cry, I realized, and blinked furiously.

"I- you're a Singer, it's not my fault!" he screamed, and I screamed back, "What the hell is a Singer?!"

"Slow down and I'll tell you!" he yelled hoarsely, and I did, gradually, the roar of the engine settling into a purr.

"A Singer," Edward explained shakily, "Is a human whose blood appeals especially to a vampire; you know, _sings_. They're uncommon, but not unheard of. You happen to be one. The moment you walked into the classroom I knew what you were. You don't know… it's been so hard for me to maintain any semblance of _control_ over myself-,"

"Shut up, shut up, shut up," I chanted under my breath. No. He was wrong. He had to be wrong. I was… I was Bella Swan, not some… some… "No. No. You're lying. I'm not- not some vampire _delicacy_, I'm not the fucking _caviar_ of blood, I'm not…"

"Singers don't affect everyone," he continued. "Usually just one specific vampire; in this case, me."

"You're _lying_," I snarled.

"Bella."

"YOU'RE LYING! WHY WOULD YOU SAVE ME IF YOU WANTED TO KILL ME?! WHY EVEN TALK TO ME?! YOU'RE A LIAR!" I exploded, trembling with rage and terror.

"No, Bella, listen to me," he pleaded. "Listen. It's not- this is not you. It's me. You can't help being a Singer, but I can help my reaction to it. I've been trying, and it's been working. The more time I spend around you, resisting, the less powerful the hold gets. I can beat it. I'm stronger than it. I'm starting to grow immune to it."

"Your dad patched me up," I retorted, "So you could _murder_ me."

"No! No, I saved you- I would have saved anyone. I- it seemed wrong, to let something like that happen, when I could stop it. The others were scared; I could have been found out, if I wasn't careful. But I was. My dad's been helping me. He works with blood every day, despite what he is. That's his gift- incredible self restraint and control. If he can perform _surgeries_, I can resist a Singer."

"No," I said weakly, shaking my head. The rage had faded. The terror clung on. _You wanted this_, I reminded myself. _You wanted the truth, and now you have it_.

"I can," he insisted. "I've been so- wondering if every move I've made was the right one, trying to decide what would be safest…"

"That's not… You don't get to decide," I whispered. "You don't get to decide what's safe and what's not. You don't- _I_ do. _Me_. If I'm… if I'm what you say I am, it's _my_ choice. And you…," I didn't know what to say or do. I couldn't think straight. I wanted to go home. More than anything, I wanted to go home.

Almost as if in answer to my prayers, we passed the Welcome to Forks! sign, and I felt some of the dread and fear leave my body. Almost there. Almost out of this nightmare. Edward had lapsed into silence, and so had I. Within minutes we were turning onto my street. I wanted to stop the car in the middle of the road and run out, but forced myself to pull into the driveway.

I sniffed as I fumbled with the seatbelt. My cheeks were wet, and I was mortified, and terrified.

"I'm sorry," he said desperately. "I- I thought we could… Once I… I thought we could be friends." The look on his face was almost pathetically childish. He really was forever seventeen.

"Grow up," I spat out, and slammed the door behind me, dashing up to the front door of the house, yanking out my key. I was inside before he even got out to walk around to the driver's side of his car. I leaned against the front door after I'd shut and locked it. My knees felt weak. I could hear the sounds of the television in the living room, and Dad called out, "Bella? You home?" over it.

"Yes," I called back, and took another second to compose myself some before I walked in to see him.

"Are you okay?" he immediately demanded, half rising from his seat. "Bells, you look like you just saw a ghost."

"I'm fine," I forced out. "Just ate too much at dinner, is all. I'm really tired. I'm going to go to bed now."

He stared at me for another few moments, obviously scanning me for signs of bodily harm, but seeing none, relented. "Alright. Turning in early might do you good. It's barely eight."

"Oh," I mumbled as I wandered towards the stairs. It had seemed so much later. I stumbled up the stairs like a zombie, and took a shower that was nearly twenty minutes long, scrubbing at my body ferociously, until my dad pounded on the door to make sure I wasn't drowning. I got ready for bed, very quickly, and lay down.

It took me a while to get up the nerve to reach over and shut off the light.

_It's just a theory, a particular set of assumptions. It's just a theory, an educated guess, a conclusion not forgone..._

_\- Tracy Chapman, "A Theory"_


	10. Chapter 10

_I intended to get this chapter up over Thanksgiving break... That obviously didn't happen. Anyways, here we have Bella being a terrible liar, Edward playing it safe, and Lauren getting her comeuppance. Also, some intense note passing and a very cliche truce. Enjoy. Thank you to jansails, muffinmom, and snowflakelover for your reviews, Lali-8, ffictionreader01, kiwihipp, , and vinie24 for your faves, and Lulu V, SARAH DB, kiwihipp, omfgsmittenkitten, and for your follows. _

CHAPTER TEN

I DIDN'T SLEEP, or at least I didn't feel like I had the next morning. Upon waking I huddled under my covers in my darkened room for nearly a half hour, until I heard Dad's cruiser pull out of the driveway. I stared at the ceiling blankly, trying to convince myself last night had just been a nightmare. Just like all the other ones. None of it had happened.

Edward Cullen was not a vampire, he had not shown me his fangs, we had not both been hysterical messes speeding down the highway screaming at each other. A dead boy had not been thinking about murdering me since I arrived in town. My life was perfectly ordinary, always had been, always would be, and _last night had not been real_.

But when I closed my eyes I saw rows of sharp teeth and a voice whispered _Singer_ in my head. I lurched out of bed. It was dark out, dark enough to still seem like night, and barely anything was visible due to the thick, heavy fog. It even _looked_ like a bad dream. I wore a winter parka; I'd left my lighter jacket in Jess's car, I recalled. I focused on that one ordinary, mundane detail from last night while I nibbled at a granola bar and forced myself to drink some milk. I was running late for school and it was frigid outside; the kind of cold that pricked at your skin like tiny needles.

I shuffled my way down the driveway; it was not icy, but I couldn't see more than a foot in front of my face. I drove faster than I should have to school, not wanting to have to make up an excuse to procure a late pass, and blasted the radio so loud I could barely hear myself think.

_Well, it's early in the morning, and my heart is feeling lonely, just thinking 'bout you, baby! Got me twisted in the head, and I don't know to take it, but it's driving me so crazy; I don't know if it's right, I'm tossing turning in my bed!_

The song didn't do much to improve my mood as I struggled to find a spot in the parking lot. I killed the engine and jumped out when I finally did, and awkwardly ran up to the school. Luckily, I was not quite as late as I'd feared, and there were still plenty of people hanging around outside, who snickered at my rushing. I slowed to a walk, face flushed, and then saw Jess standing outside the cafeteria, holding my jacket. "Thanks," I said gratefully.

"I tried to call your house last night to tell you you'd forgot it, but your dad picked up and said you were in the shower." She was giving me a look I was too tired to try to interpret.

"Sorry," I mumbled. "I was… last night was weird."

"No kidding!" she exclaimed sarcastically. "Bella, come on, spill! What happened with Ed after you left?!"

I shrugged. "He drove me home."

She stared at me. "What's wrong with you? You sound super depressed. Did you guys fight or something?"

I couldn't even vocalize how much I did not want to have this conversation right now. "Something like that," I muttered, and was relieved when the warning bell sounded.

Jess pursed her lips, annoyed. "Whatever, we'll talk in Trig."

I nodded silently as she hurried off, and made my way to English with my head down. I had to think of a convincing lie to tell Jess, but my mind seemed to have shut down and started cowering in a corner. Thinking of a lie meant confronting last night head on, and I had no interest in doing that. But I knew Jess, and she knew me. I supposed by this point she was actually my best friend. It was an odd feeling, like a shirt I'd never worn before. I'd never had or been anyone's best friend. But she wasn't going to just let this go, and the more I held my tongue the more suspicious she'd get.

I wasn't sure why I wasn't desperate to tell anyone, anyone at all the truth, even if no one would ever believe me. Edward Cullen had a pulse. He breathed and ate and slept. His body was as alive as anyone else, dead though he might be. Unless I hunted him down and dragged him back to Forks ten years from now to prove he hadn't aged, the whole 'The Cullens are vampires!' claim was not going to hold much water, except with the Quileutes, and it wasn't like I could just move onto the reservation.

But even if it had been believable… something held me back. Something said, _no_. No, you can't do that. It would be too cruel. Why should I care about ethics? He could kill me at any moment; any member of his 'family' could. Despite what he claimed, they had probably killed before. They were dangerous. If Edward could read minds (more or less), what could the rest of them do?

It just seemed… despite my sheer terror, my mental walls, my utter revulsion at the thought of what they were, I couldn't. It would be a betrayal, and though I felt as though Edward had betrayed me, leading me to believe he meant no harm, making me think we could be friends, I couldn't do that. Not to anyone, and not to him.

I sat down dismally in class, not even noticing Mike until he spoke up. "How was Port Angeles?" he asked brightly, and I forced myself to look up from the graffiti on my ancient desk at his sunny face. I floundered for words like a fish out of water.

"It was fine," I finally said, forcing myself to shrug. "Jess and Angie both got dresses for the dance. We shopped around and went out to eat. It's… it's a nice little city," I lied. I was never going to be able to go back there again, not without a nervous breakdown. That fact outraged me. Over a decade of living in Phoenix and one night in some dumpy Washington tourist trap and I was scared of ever walking by myself on city streets again.

Mike looked hopeful. "So uh… did Jess say anything about Monday night?" he asked with a slow smile.

For the life of me, I could barely remember a word Jess or Angie or anyone but Edward had said that night, so I just nodded. He looked like he was fishing for more than that, so I elaborated. "She's still into you, I wouldn't worry. She asked you to the dance, remember?"

He rolled his eyes a bit. "No, I forgot. Yes, I remember. I just- I've liked her for a long time, and I don't want to mess anything up."

I smiled, the first genuine smile of my day, if a thin and temporary one. "You're not going to mess anything up, Mike. Trust me."

"People, I want your papers on my desk!" Mr. Mason was calling, and we both hurried to the front, me tripping over a backpack on the floor on the way there. The rest of English was dedicated to our new reading, _The Crucible_, being handed out, and I daydreamed and read. Anything to be out of my own head, out of this situation.

By third period the fog was gone, but the sky had only lightened slightly. It looked like storm weather, but I didn't think the storm was coming anytime soon; by now I knew what it felt like just before a storm in Forks, and this wasn't it. This was the prelude. I felt nauseous and stopped looking at the sky, focusing on the ground until I got to Trig.

Jess was wide eyed and alert in the back row, and not in anticipation of the lesson. I briefly considered turning right around and leaving the classroom, but Mr. Varner was hovering near the door. No escape. I trudged over to my seat. Maybe if I looked withdrawn enough, she would leave me alone.

Not a chance.

"Sooooooo," she drew it out for so long that she burst into giggles herself, and I cracked a tiny smile. "Come on, out with it," she urged when she had regained her composure.

I looked at Jess, with her wild black curls gathered back in a bouncy ponytail and her sharp, inquisitive blue eyes and the grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. I thought of her and Mike holding hands in a diner booth and of her and Angie swaying under dim lights in their shiny new dresses and heels at the dance. And in that moment, I would have given anything to be her.

"I…." What could I say? What _should_ I say? I was not a smooth talker or an experienced liar. I'd never had to really lie before. I'd never lied as much in my entire life as I had since arriving in Forks. This town was evil; that had to be it. The Cullens were just symptoms of the disease. I was trapped in my own personal hell and I didn't even know it. My own personal _rainy_ hell.

"He drove me home."

"_And_?"

"And we… we talked."

"_About_?"

"Nothing, really-,"

"_Bella_!"

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Lauren sashaying towards us. Mr. Varner appeared to be in no rush to start class today. I felt as though I was careening down a tunnel which had no light at the end of it. Jess was practically out of her seat and in mine in anticipation.

So I panicked.

"He asked me out and now we're dating," I blurted out, latching onto the very first, and most horrific, excuse that came to mind.

"He what?!" Jess yelped and Lauren pulled up short.

"You're dating Ed Cullen?" she asked in such a condescending tone of disbelief that I wanted to slap the shit out of her with my graphing calculator.

This momentary surge of anger gave me the _oomph_ to back up my blatant lie. "Yes," I snapped far more loudly than I intended. "I am. _He_ asked _me_ out, last night. Sorry again you couldn't come, by the way. We _really_ missed you."

She stared, Jess made a squeaking noise, and I wanted to crawl under my desk and die. Half the class was staring at us.

"Burnedddd," someone hooted, and another voice snickered, "How you like them apples, Laur?"

'Laur' scoffed, "Whatever," and sat down abruptly in her seat as Mr. Varner finally approached the board. Jess was still staring at me, open mouthed. I hid behind my hair, and for once in my life did math with no reluctance whatsoever.

Five minutes into the lecture the first note appeared.

**are you really dating him?**

_yes_.

**omg bella! this is insane! so he just asked you on the drive home? he's got balls!**

_i guess_.

**look at lauren she's so mad she's shaking! i never knew you were such a bitch! ha! this is great! **

_no it's not._

**ed will protect you, don't worry! true loveeeeee~**

_stop._

**aw come on! why are you so glum? were you embarrassed to tell me?**

_i don't want everyone to know._

**too late for that girl! but who cares! you're dating a cullen! that's insane! they DON'T date.**

_they're dating each other._

**not eddie! what'd he say when you said yes.**

_we were both kind of freaking out._

**you guys are adorable. you have to go to the dance together now!**

_i don't think so. _

**YES BELLA. YOU HAVE TO. **

_varner is coming around to check work stop._

After that she relented, but continued to stare at me out of the corner of her eye with glee. I felt like I was going to be sick. What had I just done? By lunch the entire school would be convinced Edward and I were dating. _What had I just done_? The plan had been to pretend he didn't exist from here on out, not get myself stuck with him!

I only had one other option, which was to admit I had lied. Which would be social suicide. Who lied about dating someone? Middle schoolers, maybe. Really stupid middle schoolers. My friends would abandon me. I would have no one and nothing. I couldn't get through a year and half of that.

Desperate times called for desperate measures. As soon as the bell rang, and before Jess cold even open her mouth, I deployed the ultimate distraction: I told her Mike had asked me about her. She obviously knew what I was doing, but it worked. The entire walk to Spanish was spent discussing Mike. What exactly Mike had said, his tone as he said it, what I said in response, what he'd looked like…. I frantically drew it out for as long as possible, and in Spanish we were separated into groups for mock conversations. To my guilty relief, Jess was not in my group, nor was anyone I really knew.

When the bell rang for lunch, I was sick with dread. Jess caught up with me as I reached the door, but as she started to interrogate me again she saw something that made her freeze.

_Crap, crap, crap_.

I turned like a caught criminal to face Edward. His face was entirely neutral, but he had to know. He had to know so very much, if he was really tuned into everyone's stations. Still, he said nothing beyond an amicable, "Hi, Jessica," and she silently nudged me towards him with a nervous titter and darted off.

I felt like a lamb left alone with a lion. We looked at each other for few seconds, and beyond the carefully composed mask I saw fear and regret and paranoia glinting in his eyes. And he must have seen the terror and guilt and desperation engraved in mine. Right then and there we came to some immediate, silent understanding, because we wound our way together out the door and to the cafeteria, neither of us saying a word, shielding one another from every stare thrown our way.

We got into the lunch line. I couldn't look at anything by the zipper of my jacket, which I anxiously fiddled with. I didn't need to see what everyone in that cafeteria was looking at. Still, it wasn't as if the room had gone silent. It was as noisy as ever, and I glanced up at Edward hesitantly. "I can explain," I mouthed, and he just shook his head.

"I think we should sit together today," he said with forced levity, and I stiffly nodded, before busying myself filling my tray with food. The more time I spent eating, the less time I spent talking. He did similarly, and we sat at a lonely table in the corner, next to one another. Across was too much, and we both knew it. We'd be forced to face each other then.

I rubbed an apple in between my hands. He took a forced bite of pizza and slowly chewed. After he swallowed he said, "I'm sorry, again."

I couldn't bring myself to say anything in response, and picked at the label on the apple with my nail.

"We shouldn't have talked about it then. You were upset- understandably, I mean, and I was… I wasn't in the best state of mind either."

I gave a barely noticeable nod and flicked the peeled off label off my nails.

"I know you don't trust me anymore," he muttered. "And I get it. What I don't get is why everyone seems to think we're _dating_."

I finally glanced up at him. He didn't look angry, but confused.

"I… I panicked. Jess was prying for information and I didn't know what to say, and I obviously couldn't say what we really talked about…" I trailed off and took a hurried bite out of my apple.

"You… you're not going to tell anyone?" There was that painfully hopeful tone again.

"Well, I don't want to die," I retorted, taking another bite and ignoring the roiling in my stomach.

"_Bella_," Now he sounded offended. "I'm not going to- no one is going to hurt you. I swear."

"On what?" I muttered. "Your life?"

He said nothing and I hated myself for feeling bad.

"Look. Your secret is safe with me," I forced out less sarcastically than usual. "No one would believe me, anyways. So your family can stop panicking and planning a bloodbath."

"We're not monsters," he said after a moment.

I was sullen and silent.

"If we are, we're trying to be good ones. Can you believe that?"

I looked up at him again and to my despair saw no lie in his eyes. "We messed everything up," I finally admitted. "I messed everything up. I should have just- we were almost friends. I should have just stopped. Stopped trying to solve you."

"It's not your fault. We…," he paused and took another reluctant bite of pizza. "We just have to deal with it. Let's look at the facts, okay? So everyone thinks we're dating. That's fine. We just have to act normal and spend a bit more time around each other."

He read the look on my face, which said that spending a 'a bit more time' around him was not something I was delighted at the prospect of doing.

"Or we can stage a mock breakup complete with screaming and throwing things tomorrow," he suggested dryly, and I found myself smiling a brittle smile in spite of everything.

"You're…. you're odd," he said after a moment of almost companionable silence. I wondered why he had to ruin it.

"Thanks."

"No, I mean… you're very calm. Very composed. I don't know anyone else who reacts to things the way you do. My family was sure you wouldn't be in school today, or your dad would be pulling up in front of our house."

I laughed a little at that, and his wary expression seemed to soften.

"I broke all the rules. Telling you. I shouldn't have done that."

"We both keep doing things we shouldn't do," I mumbled. "It's a shared trait."

Now he chuckled. "So we're both going to hell, then?"

"Do we have to pretend to date there, too?"

He smirked a little and then cautiously asked, "What about Seattle?"

Seattle. I had almost forgotten about Seattle. I shifted uncomfortably. "I don't know anymore."

"Well, if you want to go somewhere else…," he shrugged.

"With you?" I stiffened.

"Jessica is determined to make us go to the dance," he warned.

I groaned softly. "Fine, we'll- we'll go somewhere. I don't know."

"I know a place."

I gave him a suspicious look.

"It's not creepy or anything," he defended. "You'd like it." He hesitated. "You can drive."

I snorted. "Are you sure?"

"I trust you."

My apple was now just a core. I nibbled on my pizza. "So what's your favorite, then?

"My favorite what?" he asked puzzled.

"Thing to hunt."

He stared at me, I looked at him sideways.

"Mountain lion," he finally said wearily.

"Is it a fair fight?" I took a bigger bite of my pizza and chewed, hard, puffing out my cheeks.

He sounded slightly exasperated. "Most of the time."

The bell rang and the cafeteria was suddenly one united blur of motion as people stood up, grabbing their coats and bags and dumping their trays. I slowly got to my feet and he to his. We exchanged another silent look, and headed to Bio.

_Interrogation, all I judge... I have become an interrogation of my own, let the records show..._

_\- James, 'Interrogation'_


	11. Chapter 11

_Sorry for the wait; Christmas madness kicked in, and then I decided to get sick. And stay sick. And get sick again. Anyways, consider this a late New Years present, even if it it a pretty short chapter compared to others. New update soon, I promise! Thank you to jansails, muffinmom, ded1, corkykellems, snowflakelover, and nickaroos for your reviews, TheEagerScribbler, Wollerosekaufn, and ded1 for your faves, and TheEagerScribbler, corkykellems, ded1, huda1220 and mama2roo for your follows!_

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE MOOD IN BIO was more lighthearted than usual; someone had heard that Banner's last class had gotten to watch a movie, and everyone was hopeful we'd be doing the same. Nothing cheered up a room full of moody teenagers faster than the prospect of not having to do any actual work. Because of this, everyone was busy chatting, and Edward and I got fewer stares than we might have otherwise. Mr. Banner was nowhere to be seen.

We took our seats quietly, and for once the silence was almost amiable. We'd come to some sort of truce during lunch, and while I certainly hadn't suddenly come to trust him, I had a slightly more optimistic outlook than I'd had this morning, fake relationship aside. My improved mood only got better when Banner came in wheeling a tall stand with an ancient television and VCR on it. He was met with cheers, which he ignored.

Of course, it took about five minutes to actually get the video playing, but once he did someone flicked off the lights, and suddenly I was alone, in the dark, next to Edward. The room wasn't pitch black, but the battered shades were down, blocking any meager light that might have crept into the room. The parallels to one of my nightmares was a bit much. I squirmed in my seat.

If Edward noticed my discomfort, he pretended not to. I managed to get a grip about fifteen minutes in, and we sat in slightly strained silence for the remaining time. We didn't finish the video, either, which was good; hopefully we'd spend tomorrow's class finishing it. I felt slightly flushed and awkward as Mr. Banner told someone to turn the lights back on, as if I had been caught doing something I shouldn't have been.

I glanced over at Edward, and at the same time he glanced at me. He looked similarly uncomfortable, right down to the flushed face, but was quickly regaining his composure. He offered a small smile, which I belatedly returned as he stood up and stretched a bit. It reminded me of a cat, I thought suddenly, and brushed the thought away, gathering up my things.

"I have gym next," I muttered, zipping up my backpack.

He shrugged. "I'll walk you."

We were quiet again on the way to the gym; the fog had dissipated outside, but it was still freezing, which didn't really encourage conversation. I was almost happy to be escaping to the heated gymnasium. "See you," I said, and he nodded before I slipped inside the double doors.

I spent gym eying the racket in my hand as if it were a bomb set to go off at any moment, and from the looks other people were giving me, they felt similarly. I didn't have high hopes when Clapp ordered us to make teams, but Mike came over, to my relief. I spent most of the class cowering behind him as he single handedly won three games out of four without so much as breaking a sweat. There was something to be said for having befriended one of the best athletes in the school.

"So you and Ed Cullen are a thing now?" he asked as we returned our rackets, and I felt a bit less complimentary towards him.

"Yeah," I said a bit more shortly than was polite, and he looked like a rebuked puppy. Feeling bad about this, I beat a quick retreat to the girls locker room to change.

American History went by quickly, and then the final bell was ringing and I was unsure of what to do. Was I supposed to seek Edward out, now that we were 'dating'? Was that what boyfriends and girlfriends did? But he wasn't outside my final class, so I made my way to the parking lot, almost relieved to be free of the pressure of having to act as though we were in a relationship, if only for a little while.

But when I reached the parking lot, I saw him balancing on the curb nervously, and, while tempted to just head straight for Toy Truck, wandered over to him.

"You probably just want to get home," he apologized without really apologizing, and then said, "So I'll pick you up Saturday morning?"

"I'm driving," I reminded him sternly, and he rolled his eyes a little.

"Yes, I remember. I suggested it."

The rest of the school was crowding the area now, either heading to the line of buses, which was really quite short given the small student body, or to their cars. Most of the juniors and seniors seemed to carpool. Edward and I were under a bunch of eyes all at once now, and turning red, I quickly hugged him, as if to prove to the masses that we were in fact a couple. He was completely taken aback by this, and returned the brief embrace stiltedly just as I was pulling away.

"Everyone was watching," I hissed, and he gave me an 'I can see that, Bella' look before I walked away.

The afternoon and evening passed quickly; I didn't have much homework. I had a very strange dream in which Edward and I had to get married to prevent a war between vampires and humans, and woke up at three in the morning half horrified, half amused by the sheer insanity of the whole thing before falling abruptly back asleep.

The next morning I felt better than I had the previous day, and was almost calm at the prospect of seeing Edward again. Dad and I ate breakfast in silence together; he fried both of us eggs, a special treat. As we deposited our plates in the sink he looked at me for a moment, and then asked cautiously, "You still going to Seattle this Saturday?"

Saturday. Seattle. Right. Lie.

"Yesssss?" I stretched it out like a piece of gum in my mouth.

"Can't believe no one asked you to the dance," he said gruffly.

"It's girl's choice," I reminded him, wishing he'd drop it. The dance was the least of my concerns right now.

He frowned. I internally cringed at the idea of my own dad pitying me for not having a date. Wait. If the whole school thought Edward and I were dating, then it was only a matter of time before it got back to Dad. He didn't know yet; he would have said something last night. But why hadn't I thought of this before?! I was still thinking in Phoenix terms; only in Forks did you have worry about your dad finding out about your fake relationship as soon as he got into work.

For now I just kept my head down until he left for work, not looking forward to dinner tonight at all. I doubted Dad would grill with questions too much, the way Mom would have, but stony silence and suspicious looks might be worse. Sometimes I was convinced he thought I was still fourteen.

Edward was hanging around the parking lot when I got to school, and we awkwardly stood beside one another, fingertips millimeters away from touching, silently wondering what to do.

"Are people wondering why we're not….," I felt my cheeks light up as if matches had been struck beneath the skin. "….You know, kissing or anything?"

"Yes," he muttered back to me, but studiously avoided my gaze. I focused on the cracked pavement.

"Would you like to play a game?" he asked after a few moments of tired silence.

I raised an eyebrow.

"What kind of game?" It was not flirty or coy; rather it was a tone of flat disbelief.

"We could ask each other questions," he explained stiffly, but I could almost sense the embarrassment lurking underneath. "If we're going to… do this then we should know more about each other, right?"

"Fine. You first," I insisted.

"What's your favorite color?" he asked tentatively. The question was so innocuous I laughed.

"Um, brown."

"Brown?" Now he was smirking.

I grew slightly defensive. "It's… safe. Nurturing. It's the color of dirt and rocks and trees." When I thought of brown I thought of Arizona; I thought of old men and women with rough, tanned skin, of the endless desert, of my mom's warm eyes. Everything that ought to be brown here was coated in sickly green or shrouded in cold grey.

"What's your favorite color?" I swiftly turned the tables.

He thought for a moment. "Green."

"Your eyes are green," I complained, sure this was the reason for it.

"My mother's eyes were green, too," he retorted, and then without missing a beat: "What sort of music do you listen to?"

"Everything."

"Everything," he repeated doubtfully.

"I like all types. What about you?"

"Me too," he admitted, reluctantly, and then in a significantly lower tone, "But that sort of comes with the not aging territory."

I did snicker a little, in spite of myself.

He walked me to English, and our questions turned to movies. I'd seen _Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind_ and _Phantom of the Opera_ last year and loved them both; he'd preferred _The Village _and _Howl's Moving Castle_. It was my turn to smirk at the admission of the latter, and I couldn't help but innocently ask if he'd seen Van Helsing, too. Edward narrowed his eyes in amusement at me.

When I saw him again after Spanish we talked about places we'd been. I wasn't surprised to hear he'd been, well… everywhere. All across the Americas and most of Europe; his 'family' had never stayed for any prolonged amount of time in Asia or the Middle East, he admitted.

"How many…. like you are there, then?" I did manage to summon up the nerve to ask, in a rare empty stretch of hallway. "Are you… the only ones or?"

He shook his head and my stomach clenched with distant fear. "No. No, there's many covens. All across the globe. Most are small," he added quickly, as if that made up for it. "We're one of the larger ones, with seven. And many of us are… drifters, you could say. Some are less _social_ than others. Before, we were staying with another coven, all female, in Alaska."

Wonderful. Yet another state to cross off my bucket list. How many covens were there in America alone? I never did ask, and when we sat together at lunch I was grateful the subject changed to books. We talked about books for a long time, all the way through Bio as well, whispering during the video when Banner wasn't stalking the classroom; Edward was a voracious reader, just like me. I felt like I'd never talked that much in my life; I was hoarse by gym.

I barely said anything in gym; Mike seemed to be under the assumption that I was wandering about in some love struck daze, and so bemusedly let me silently hide behind him once again. Still, I was almost eager as I changed out of my gym clothes, which seemed odd. I usually despised interrogation sessions, even with good friends, and while maybe Edward and I were haltingly, unwillingly on our way to becoming friends, I shouldn't have been that happy to trade questions and answers with him like jokes or riddles.

The sky was threatening rain outside, but Edward and I lingered on the sidewalk as the parking lot. "Last question of the day," he assured me, and I rolled my eyes. "What do you miss most about Phoenix?"

I froze and glanced up at him. He had that peculiar, almost hopeful expression again on his thin face.

I almost sighed, but stopped myself. "I miss the cicadas," I found myself admitting. "Even right on the outskirts of the city- where my mom and I lived- you could still hear them. In the summer, you know? Sometimes they were louder than the traffic. Here all you hear at night is rain and wind. And I miss the trees in Arizona. They're nothing like the ones here. The palo verdes especially. The leaves look like feathers. And the sky… the sky stretches on forever. You can even see past the mountains, not like here. And the mountains are so pretty; purple and orange and gold, like something out of a sci fi movie… The sun's everywhere. In everything. My mom used to say when I was little that she thought the Arizona desert was like Heaven looked like." I found myself smiling in spite of myself, and he was just watching me, green eyes less sharp than usual.

"It's just… it's really beautiful there. People don't think it'd be so pretty, because it seems like everything's dead, but really, nothing's more alive." Everything was stripped bare in Arizona, laid out in perfect disorder as far as the eye could see. In Washington everything was hidden, concealed, just out of my view. Where I had grown up there were no mysteries, no secrets, just glorious certainty, that the sky was never going to end, that the mountains would never fall, that the sun would never truly set.

Now that I had stopped talking at last I realized the parking lot was rapidly emptying. "What do you miss most about Illinois?" I asked quickly, embarrassed I'd rambled so much.

He considered this thoughtfully. "I miss my old house," he finally said. "There was a big tree outside and there were a lot of windows, and the sun was everywhere," he echoed me, whether purposefully or not, I had no idea. "And we had an old piano. My parents taught me how to play it when I was very young. I'd spend hours practicing."

"That sounds… nice," I said quietly, suddenly feeling a small tear of sympathy opening up in me, before we were distracted by the beeping of a car. The other Cullens had pulled up alongside us in the Volo. I suddenly wondered what, exactly, they knew, and took a step back. Rose was driving, Emmett alongside her in the front, and she didn't look happy. Her and Edward exchanged an unreadable look and he glanced back at me. "I have to go."

"Right," I croaked out, trying to not sound at all intimidated by the sudden increase in the number of vampires in my presence. I was reduced to waving awkwardly as he got in, and then hurriedly made my way to Toy Truck. It was starting to rain.

The sky had gone almost completely dark as I pulled in the driveway at home, and the rain was now pouring down like a thousand buckets all overturned at once. I hurried inside, and read in front of the TV with the volume muted, until lights from the driveway shone into the dimly light living room at around what should have been dusk. This wasn't surprising, but then a second pair of headlights pulled into the driveway, and that made me put down my book and peek curiously out the window. A smaller black car had followed Dad's cruiser into the driveway. The rain had lightened to a substantially lighter drizzle, and the front door swung open.

"Bella!" he called, obviously expecting me to be upstairs, and then blinked as he saw me standing, book in hand, mere feet away. "There you are. Come say hi to Billy and Jake, they're over to watch the game." Yes. This was exactly what my evening had needed. I forced on a smile and waved as the Blacks came through the door.

_Complication, complication... Ransom the birth of a new destruction... It's different now; it's what we always wanted._

_\- Killing Joke, 'Complications'_


	12. Chapter 12

_Slightly longer than the last chapter, maybe a bit fillerish, depending on how you view it. Enjoy. Thank you to jansails, lifi8, nickaroos, snowflakelover, and MusetteBlanchard for your reviews, Dollsrme, Fan of Hina-chan, jaime bard, and ybzib for your faves, and Fan of Hina-chan, Wollerosekaufn, jaime bard, justabookreader, lifi8, and ybzib for your follows! We're right on the edge of the halfway point of this story now, guys, so stay tuned in._

CHAPTER TWELVE

I STOOD THERE AWKWARDLY as Dad ducked back out into the rain to help Jake get his father's wheelchair up the front steps, onto the porch, and into the house. Billy Black had been in a wheelchair for what seemed like a long time now; something about complications from diabetes. I vaguely remembered him not being one when I was in Forks for the summer as a little kid, but that had been before his wife had died. I didn't really remember Sarah Black much at all; there had been a car accident when I was ten and Jake was nine.

The house was suddenly much louder; Dad was teasing/scolding Jake about him driving without a permit and Billy was laughing uproariously. I flicked on the lights in the living room and hall, resisting the urge to bolt upstairs and lock myself in my room. Did Billy know about the Cullens? Did he know about me and Edward? Did Dad know about me and Edward? Would Billy tell Dad about the Cullens if he knew about me and Edward? 'By the way, your daughter is dating a vampire'? Most importantly, how was I going to get my homework done if I had to sit on the couch, watch the game, and make small talk?

"Jake here couldn't wait to see you again, Bella," Billy addressed me for the first time, and I froze, and then glanced at Jake, who looked sheepish and then stared down at his worn sneakers. His father watched me with a steady gaze, and I reddened.

"Are you hungry, Jake?" I blurted out.

He looked up at me, startled. "Uh, yeah, but don't-,"

"No, I was going to make dinner anyways," I said in a voice brimming with false cheer. "Do you know how to make grilled cheese sandwiches? You can help. Dad, Billy-," I tried to look as innocent as possible. "You're hungry, right?"

"Bells, if you've got schoolwork don't worry about us, we can fend for ourselves-," Dad began; he didn't look angry with me, this was good.

"No, no, it's fine." I insisted, and then darted into the kitchen, Jake trailing after me.

I fried the sandwiches while he carefully, almost cautiously, sliced a tomato beside me. The television was blasting, and I was confident any quiet conversation we made wouldn't be overheard by our respective fathers. Excellent.

"Did you ever finish that car you were working on?" I began casually.

His face lit up. "You remember! But nah, I still need some parts. We had to borrow our neighbor's car to get here."

"I still haven't seen any master cylinders lying around." I gave him a slight smile, and he grinned. Jake, I decided, was a good kid. Well, not kid, he was only a year younger, but I regretted us not having interacted much at all before now. Maybe I wouldn't have hated Forks so much every summer if I'd had a friend to look forward to seeing.

In the meantime, as I flipped the sandwiches in the pan, I tried to think of a way to ask Jacob if his father knew about me and Edward, but I had no idea how to even phrase that. Instead I stood there like an idiot, keeping my ears as tuned into what was going on in the living room as possible.

It was a lost cause, but when the food was done I forced myself to sit with them all in the living room, my sandwich balanced precariously on a paper plate on my knees. Billy said nothing to my dad that had anything even remotely to do with me or the Cullens, and after the first half hour or so I began to relax, but not enough that I felt comfortable going upstairs. Instead I stared blankly at the television and cheered at what seemed to be the appropriate moments, until finally the game was over and the Blacks were on their way out the door.

"Do you think you guys will come down to the beach again soon?" Jake asked me hopefully as Dad held the door for him to push Billy out.

"Yeah, maybe," I shrugged as optimistically as I could manage, given the anxiety still clinging to me.

"You both oughta come up for the next game," Dad was telling Billy, and he nodded.

"You can count on it," he said, and then he looked at me, and my nervous smile faded. "Take care of yourself, Bella."

I nodded rapidly and backed off towards the stairs as they left; I'd almost made it to the top when Dad called for me. I turned around so fast the only thing that stopped me from stumbling and falling down the stairs was my white knuckle grip on the banister. Luckily, he didn't seem to notice.

"I feel like I barely got to talk to you," Dad said, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly. "You have a good day at school?"

"Yeah," I said quickly. "Uh- my badminton team in gym is really good." I wanted to slap myself in the face. Talking about gym? He'd know something was up if he didn't already.

"Bella, I know," he said, to my horror. I almost pitched forward on the stairs right then and there. A broken neck would be the least of my worries.

"You're sixteen," he sighed. "And Bells, you're a pretty, smart girl; I'm not surprised you've already got yourself a boyfriend.

….He wasn't threatening to shoot or arrest anyone. This was good, right? I could feel my face heating up like an iron, however.

"Dad, I….," I trailed off helplessly.

"If you're dating someone, I'm glad it's a good kid. That doesn't mean I don't want to have a talk with Edward at some point, though." Great, now he was using his 'Chief Swan' voice. I nodded reluctantly, resolving that our sham of a 'relationship' would be over long before that had a chance to happen.

"…Thanks, Dad," I muttered. "I didn't know how to really… tell you…"

"Are you two going to the dance together?"

"Actually, I think we're gonna go hiking Saturday," I said quickly, scurrying up the last two steps to the top of the stairs. "We won't be out past dark, don't worry- night Dad!" I nearly ran into my room, closing my door firmly behind me with a soft groan. As painful as that had been, at least he just thought I was dating a 'nice boy', not a 'nice vampire'. Honestly, the entire evening could have gone much, much worse. I calmed down as I powered through all the homework I hadn't started until now, and was ready to fall asleep at my desk by the time I finished, much later than usual.

I didn't dream; I was too tired, and I was in a good mood when I woke up the next morning. Things, I decided, were looking up. I no longer had to worry about Dad finding out about me and Edward, and I was reasonably sure I wasn't going to die tomorrow. I even hummed along to Usher on the way to school.

Edward was hanging around waiting for me in the parking lot, and I was too relieved in general to worry about what people would think of us, supposedly dating but never showing any public displays of affection. He seemed amused by my good mood, but was quiet, and we didn't say all that much to one another until we really had a chance to talk during lunch.

"I want to start sitting with my friends again," I said bluntly as I smeared cream cheese on my bagel. "We can't just sit by ourselves like this every day- people will think it's even weirder.

"It's annoying my siblings," he agreed. "We should alternate. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, we sit with my family, Tuesday, Thursday we sit with your friends."

I gave him a flat look. "Not a chance. I only get to see my friends in school- we sit Monday, Wednesday, Friday with them; you don't have to sit with us if you don't want to."

"You're so stubborn," he muttered petulantly, but I took another bite of my bagel and ignored him, until he spoke up again, in an even quieter tone, if that was possible.

"I have to leave after lunch."

I shrugged, "Okay,", and ignored the slightly nauseous feeling in my stomach as my chewing slowed. "Because you have to…,"

"Alice is coming with me, to hunt," he stated the obvious as if to remind both me and himself of the reality of things.

"Because you're worried about tomorrow," I stated as calmly as I could.

"It never hurts to be careful," he murmured.

"I can bring my mace," I suggested. "And if you start staring at my neck a lot, I'll just-," I mimed spraying and he snorted.

"You're in a much better mood than usual."

I debated over whether or not to take offense to that comment. "My dad knows," I informed him, a little snidely, and relished the way his eyes widened.

"He called you a good kid, don't worry. But he wants to have a chat with you at some point. Just a heads up."

Edward exhaled and looked away. "My parents want to meet you, too."

"No," I said sharply. "No- not happening, okay? Do they think we're actually….,"

"I think so," he muttered. "They know you're a Singer, obviously but-," He cut himself off at the look on my face at the mention of 'Singer', and we sat there in silence until I broke it.

"What time should I be ready to go tomorrow?"

"I can come over first thing in the morning… unless you want to sleep in."

"I think I can manage to wake up," I retorted. "My dad will be gone fishing. He told me this morning."

He looked concerned, as if he'd rather have heard that my dad would be anxiously waiting for my return. I wondered if he'd have seen that as extra motivation to make sure I returned home in one piece. Suddenly I was reconsidering going anywhere at all with him, but I told myself it was too late to back out now. If he'd wanted to hurt me he would have done it any of the times I'd found myself alone with him before.

"Everything will be fine," I said quietly. "Right?"

"Right," he agreed, but I saw the way his eyes darted over in the general direction of where the rest of the Cullens were seated. I glanced over at them myself. Rose Cullen was glaring at us with eyes like shards of ice. In that moment, beauty queen looks or not, she was not just intimidating- she was terrifying.

"She hates me," I muttered, looking back at him.

"No," Edward said simply, but he was glowering. "Right now she hates me. For behaving so recklessly. For not being able to leave you alone."

"Well, keep your friends close and your enemies closer, I guess," I said darkly, and then went mute, because suddenly Alice Cullen was skipping over to us like a ballerina.

Up close, her looks were even more unsettling. Her short hair was a delicate mess, and her hazel eyes gleamed under heavy makeup. She looked like a dark little porcelain doll, dressed in all black, every movement poised, and she slung a stick thin arm around Edward's shoulders, leaning on him like a child.

"Eddie," she said brightly, and her voice was far higher and more feminine than I had expected. Then she looked at me, and I barely moved at all, until she tilted her head to one side and smiled like the Cheshire cat. "Bella."

She looked at him again then. "We should get going, before Rose breaks a nail wringing your neck." Her tone was teasing, but Edward stood up very fast all the same.

"I'll see you tomorrow, then," He impulsively reached a hand out towards me, as if suddenly cognizant of the fact that a 'boyfriend' wouldn't just leave his 'girlfriend' with a casual goodbye, and I grabbed it equally impulsively. My fingers were colder than his.

All I thought about in Bio was the next day. For some reason, alright, well for a reason I knew very well, it seemed like we were headed to a tipping point. We could dance around the subject of what he was and what I was and what we were doing, still in each others orbits like this, when we should have been getting as far away from one another as possible, but it had to come to an end at some point. Not to be ridiculously cheesy, but tomorrow, I felt like, was either going to be an ending or a beginning, and all I could do was question all of the life choices that had led me to calmly going to an undisclosed location with a vampire. If anything went wrong, I really had no one to blame but myself.

But I was in too deep to swim back to the shallow end now, I reflected with a note of dramatic finality, right before a shuttlecock hit me in the face. Lauren smirked on the other side of the net; Mike acted as if I'd been shot and we were in a war movie. The welt had gone down by the time I was eating dinner with Dad that night; leftover lasagna from the station. It'd definitely been overcooked, but it was stomachable, and little conversation occurred other than Dad asking where Edward and I were planning on hiking.

"I'm not sure," I shrugged as flippantly as I could with my heart suddenly racing. "He um… he said he knows the trail really well, though. And we're going pretty early in the morning. I'll definitely be back home by three at the latest."

"You really could do with a pair of good hiking boots," he commented thoughtfully, and that was it. Maybe he was plotting cornering Edward at a later date. I tried not to think about it.

I felt more and more anxious, I realized, as the evening slipped into night. When the time I usually went to bed rolled around I was far too wound up to go to sleep straight away. I listened to Chopin's nocturnes for almost an hour before I drifted off. My dreams were too short, too crazed to remember. They blurred and bled into one another, and they exhausted me.

I woke up tired, and was tempted to just call the whole thing off, before I realized I didn't even know my own 'boyfriend's' phone number, if he had one, or the Cullens' number. I imagined myself calling the house and Rose picking up the phone. Maybe it was for the best.

I moved sluggishly to get ready, although my thoughts were racing. I constantly glanced out windows, and I was too nervous to eat breakfast. I wore my worn down sneakers and a thick sweater over my jeans, although the clouds I glimpsed in the seemed much lighter than usual. Maybe we were in for another rare day of good weather. I was in the bathroom painstakingly brushing my teeth when I heard a quiet knock from the door downstairs, which seemed to echo throughout the house. Or maybe it was just my overactive imagination.

I fumbled with the deadbolt on the door before I finally yanked it open, and then I felt silly, because Edward was standing there in his usual plain winter jacket, and in jeans and sneakers, and I had opened that door expecting… expecting what? I didn't know. He looked as nervous as I felt.

"Ready?" he asked, and I could have sworn his voice shook.

I nodded, pulling on my jacket, and stepped out of the house, closing the door firmly behind me.

Having him in Toy Truck's passenger seat felt odd. I didn't turn on the radio, and drove more slowly than usual, until he dryly asked, "Is this about as fast as it goes?"

"Don't mock TT," I said under my breath, and thought I saw him roll his eyes out of the corner of my eye.

"Take the 101 North," he said as we left Dad's- my- neighborhood, and then neighborhoods in general. Forestry was our scenery, and then we were out of Forks entirely. What had happened last time I'd left town…hadn't been so good.

Edward, oblivious to my unease, or just ignoring it, instructed me to turn right onto the 1-10. A cheerful 'DEAD END' sign greeted us.

"Charming," I muttered.

"Just drive until we hit that," he said. I couldn't see his face; he was staring out the window.

"What's at the dead end?" I tried to keep my tone calm, but it wavered on the edge of obvious anxiety.

"A trail."

I drove in silence as the road narrowed and the pavement turned to gravel, then dirt. Toy Truck jutted roughly over walks and bumps, knocking both of us around, even with seat belts on. I gritted my teeth and pulled over. "We're not making it any further of this."

Just up ahead I could see where the dirt road turned into a winding trail that disappeared into the trees. I could no longer see the high way, or even hear passing morning traffic. There was nothing but the sound of the breeze in the trees, and morning birds chirping in the branches.

We got out of the truck and walked along the dirt road in silence. The clouds seemed to be clearing up, and it was warmer than it had been when we'd left the house; I wanted to take off my sweater, but all I had under it was a thin camisole. Edward had no such qualms; he'd left his jacket in Toy Truck, and was now just wearing a tee shirt. His bare arms were even whiter than mine.

"So….," I said as we paused in front of the trail marker. "How long is this?"

He shrugged. "Five miles."

"Five miles," I repeated. That'd take at least two hours to hike through the woods, and that was probably at a brisk pace. I did not do well with brisk paces.

"It's all flat," he assured me.

"I'm a slow hiker," I said snidely in reply.

He shrugged. "I'm not in a rush."

I looked down the shadowed trail in dismay, and then stepped aside to let him lead the way. But he was right; it was, in fact, mostly flat, and there were no massive boulders or downed trees blocking the way. The path was mossy, and there were more large ferns than bushes and underbrush in the way. We walked without saying a word, focusing on staying on the trail- or at least I was. Edward was always a pace ahead, almost carelessly darting along the path. For someone 'not in a rush', he sure didn't act like it.

About a half hour into our hike we began to play the game again. We talked about our favorite birthdays; mine had been my eighth, when Mom took me to the Desert Botanical Garden. The sky had been turquoise overhead; the clouds orange as the sun had set. His had been his twelfth. His parents had taken him to see the Chicago Cubs play a home game. He remembered almost perfectly their conversation during the game and what his birthday cake had tasted like that night. We talked about pets; I'd accidentally killed three fish in a row, all named Darcy, and while he'd never had a pet, his mother had had a beloved cat named Pearl.

Two hours into it, the light seemed to brighten slightly, and the denseness of the forest around us seemed to lessen. We were obviously coming to a break in the woods of some sort. Both of us quickened our pace in anticipation, Edward in particular. The light was more yellow than green now, something I'd never before seen in Washington. But then I paused, and he looked back at me.

"What?" I could hear the impatience in his voice.

"You said direct sunlight hurts you."

"It does, but the sun's not quite out yet."

We stepped out of the trees, and I stood stock still, taking in what lay before me. A perfectly circular meadow, with a gnarled, ancient looking tree in the center. The wild grasses came up to my knees, easily, and wildflowers grew in abundance. Water was running in the distance- a stream. I held out my hands and felt the warm air on my skin. Here, spring was already fully in bloom. It was like something out a movie- a Garden of Eden or something like that.

Edward brushed past me, heading for the tree, and reached its shade just as the sun came into full view overhead. The meadow glowed. He stayed at the edge of the tree's shadow.

"This is the closest I can get to sunshine."

I remained under the sun for a few long moments before I crossed the meadow to join him.

_The more I see, the more I grow, the less that I seem to know... Only that life is just a balancing act._

_\- Noa, 'The Balancing Act'_


	13. Chapter 13

_A more fluffy, dialogue heavy, shorter chapter this time around. And so the second act of the story begins... Thank you all for over 5000 views, nearly 50 reviews, 41 favorites, and 80 followers. The idea that so many people are even interested enough to just give this crazy retelling a shot is unbelievable. You guys motivate me to keep telling it. Thank you corkykellems, snowflakelover, nickaroos, and jansails for your reviews, Konohashinobi07, Lem27, jansails, and jmc62 for your faves, and FTWmadrox, __Konohashinobi07, Lem27, Marshymello, SissyCabella, jmc62, and lilmissbecki for your follows._

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I DIDN'T ENTER UNDER the shade of the gnarled tree, not at first. I stood there with one foot in the sunlight, one foot in the shadow for a few moments. Edward stepped back somewhat cautiously further under its thick branches, and then slowly got down to the ground, stretching out like a cat. He closed his eyes for a moment as the warm breeze rippled through the meadow; his face slightly flushed; from what I wasn't sure. But that was counteracted by the bruise like shadows under his pale closed lids, and I wrapped my arms around myself despite not feeling the slightest bit cold.

I stepped into the shade and slowly sat down a few feet away from him, realizing that he was singing very softly, almost childishly to himself as I did so.

"I'm always chasing rainbows, watching clouds drift by… My schemes are just like all my dreams, ending in the sky…,"

"That's pretty," I murmured, almost humming along myself, and his eyes opened suddenly, as if he'd forgotten momentarily that I was there.

He nodded, and I tucked my knees up under my chin, before wishing I'd put my hair up in a ponytail, as it was being toyed with the by the breeze. We looked at each other for a few moments, and then I frowned, almost afraid to let it continue on any longer. "What are we doing here?"

"This is where I come to think, on days like this. It makes me feel…," Edward hesitated, before continuing. "It makes me feel almost normal. To be so close to the sunlight like this. If I close my eyes I can pretend… you know."

I understood what he was trying to say, and felt something in my gut crumble a bit in sympathy. But then I looked past him to the gnarled tree and felt whatever it was stiffening again. "But why am _I_ here?"

He propped himself up a bit using his pale arms, and looked chastened. "I thought if you could see me- almost normal like this, then you wouldn't be so frightened."

I felt another sudden surge of sympathy, like floodwaters beating against a dam, but bristled at the insinuation that I was terrified of him at all times. "I'm not frightened of you," I said coldly, because there was truth to it, and it stung at me like a wasp. "You're not some-," I had been about to say 'some monster', but I stopped myself and pressed my lips together instead. I hadn't been truly scared out of my wits by him since That Night, I insisted to myself. If he really scared me I wouldn't be here now, would I?

He moved into a sitting position and looked at me more clinically, like a doctor surveying a patient. I could feel his eyes almost boring into mine, and I looked away, feeling a twist in my stomach. "Stop it."

"No," he said calmly, and then in a sudden movement was standing, and Edward, while taller than me, was no giant- he couldn't have been bigger than 5'10"- yet right then he was looming over me like one, and I stared up at him and felt an abrupt spike in my pulse rate. "You're not scared of me," he repeated, and it was equal parts innocent adolescent teasing and much darker mockery.

I went mute; I couldn't think of anything to say, and as I just sat there, he took one step forward, which shouldn't have brought him so close to me that we were face to face, but it did. "I'm faster than you," he said, and his breath was on me, and I flinched, and then, furious with myself, forced my eyes to meet his in what was either a look of abject, paralyzed terror or a defiant glower.

Then he was right beside the trunk of the tree, stretching effortlessly up to grasp one of the lower, biggest branches. His hand didn't even close all the way around it, but I saw it clench and his teeth grit, and the branch made an uneasy creaking noise. The unspoken message was that if he put any serious effort in beyond that, it would break right off. He looked at me. "I'm stronger than you."

Now something close to panic set in and I scrabbled backwards like a crab, legs tangling in the long grass.

Edward hovered over me. "How would you fight me, Bella?" He asked it almost gently, as if speaking to a child and a noise tore out of my throat, a yelp or a shriek or something like that, and my expression must have done something to him, because he stepped back, looking ashamed.

I felt as though all the blood had drained out of my face and my limbs and into my heart, because it was pumping furiously as if trying to win a race, and I couldn't even find the strength to scramble into the sunlight, where he wouldn't be able to reach me. Finally I moved my bloodless lips. "This is why I say I don't trust you."

He had gotten onto his knees, and was sitting back on his heels, uncertainly. "I want you to trust me. But that's wrong. You shouldn't trust me." He bit his lip for a moment, and then looked past me at the sunny meadow. "I shouldn't have brought you here, just to make you sit under a tree in the dark with me."

"I sit with you in the dark a lot," I said, and it came out closer to a whisper than I'd intended. My thoughts were no longer racing. Rather, they seemed to have slowed down, so much that I felt like I was barely processing the situation anymore. My racing heart was beginning to calm again, and not for the first time I tried to ask myself why I was doing this. Why I was yet again putting myself in danger like this. Why I couldn't seem to stay away, when I wasn't the bloodthirsty vampire with a Singer calling for them.

I supposed it was because he had been a mystery, an enigma that seemed to be shadowing me, but at some point the tables had turned, or evened out, and I had begun to shadow him. I thought about the parking lot, and his car, and Port Angeles, and now here we were, Edward and Bella alone once again, the predator and the prey, the hunter and the hunted.

I didn't even _like_ him. But, I realized, a sort of dull horror creeping through me like pins and needles, I didn't need to like him to feel a human connection with him. I didn't need to like him to want to know him, first as a puzzle piece, then as a person. I didn't want to know Edward the monster, Edward the dead kid. I wanted to know Edward the person, and that was all wrong.

If anything should have been keeping me circling him like this as he circled me, shouldn't it have been his non-human side? Like a spider drawing in a fly? But that wasn't it. The 'spider' of Edward Cullen disturbed me. It was the 'fly' that- well, that was the part I thought I could have been friends with, in different circumstances.

He edged closer to me, still on his knees. I leaned backwards slightly , but his eyes were on my face, not my neck or any other part of me.

"It used to hurt to be this close to you," he said almost curiously, as if conducting an experiment. "It's not as bad anymore."

Not only throwing caution to the wind but my common sense as well, I stretched out a hand hesitantly in the air between us, and let it hang there for a moment. His eyes followed it, but then he looked back up at me, and without looking down raised his own hand and tentatively wrapped it around mine. We'd never done that before; the closest we'd gotten was brushing fingers, and both of us had acted as if we were allergic to one another when that happened.

"I want to be around you," Edward admitted suddenly. "And not just because of your blood, I just- I would like to be around you for as long as you choose to let me." He dropped into more formal tones, there, and I was reminded of just what time he was from.

"For as long as I choose to let you," I repeated, and looked down at our hands, fingers precariously interlocked. "You wanted to kill me," I said calmly, so calmly that I thought I must have lost my mind right then and there, because just a few days ago I wouldn't have been able to ask this without my voice shaking. "Before. You could have killed me."

"Yes," he said honestly, and I was grateful for it. I don't think I could have handled a lie right then.

"But you didn't." I swallowed. "Has anyone in your family… ever met a Singer before?"

"I asked my brothers. Jasper hasn't, or if he has he didn't know it at the time, but Emmett has," he replied after a long silence. "Twice. One just a few years after he was turned, one in the 70s."

"What happened to them?" Images of oblivious strangers flashed through my head.

"The first time was the only time Rose has ever fought him. He's very, very strong. Stronger than most of us. Certainly stronger than her."

"Did she win?" Emmett was huge, at least 6'3" but probably taller. Rose had to be about 5'8" or 5'9", tall for a teenage girl, but tiny compared to him. I couldn't even imagine a contest of strength between the two of them.

"Yes. The second time he managed to resist. I don't think he was in favor of a rematch."

I looked at him steadily. "But you didn't have a Rose to stop you from going after me. So why didn't you?" His answer to this was what we were hinging on here, I felt. I needed to know before I decided to stay on this carnival ride or get off and run very, very far away.

Edward let go of my hand then, folded his hands in his lap, and then looked up at me again, his expression almost fierce. "Because you're a person. You love other people and you have people who love you, and even if you didn't- you're still a person."

"You don't want to be a monster," I echoed his previous words.

"There's always a choice," he said simply. "And I made mine a long time ago."

"You don't even know me."

He shrugged. "I haven't had a friend besides my siblings in almost ninety years. It can't be- it can't be so awful to want one."

I was silent for a bit.

"I still can't hear your thoughts." He sounded frustrated. "I'm not sure if it's because of what you are, or…"

I cut him off. "I made my choice."

Edward glanced at me, his brow wrinkling. "And what would that be?"

"Clearly the universe is conspiring against me, so there doesn't seem to be much choice but to hang around you for a bit longer." I rearranged my legs to sit cross legged in a far more relaxed position.

"Just like that?" he said incredulously. "You trust me, just like that?"

I frowned. "Of course not, but we can work on it."

He snorted, but his green eyes were glimmering. "Forget about me. Are you sure you're human?"

"Fairly sure," I retorted. "We humans can be quite irrational, you know."

He barked a laugh at that, a low chuckle that rolled with the wind. "And so the lion laid down with the lamb."

"Not sure if I trust that lion," I muttered.

"Well, I don't know what that lamb is thinking," he shot back.

We looked at each other for a moment and unwittingly I felt a small smile creep across my face. At that moment a swath of clouds crossed the sky, and the meadow ceased to glow in the sunlight. It seemed much more mundane under an overcast sky, and the breeze died down as well. I suddenly realized that far more time had passed than I had thought, and slowly got to my feet. My legs ached with pins and needles. Edward stood up far more gracefully.

"It's going to take us all afternoon to hike back to Toy Truck," I groaned in dismay, peering at the woods sourly.

"I know a faster way," he suggested in a tone that bordered on sly.

I looked at him suspiciously, though far less suspiciously than some of the suspicious looks I'd sent his way in the past. "Please tell me you don't transform into a bat."

"That joke was old in the sixties," he rolled his eyes. "Climb on my back."

I raised an eyebrow. "_What_?"

"Do you want to hike all the way back or do you want to get there in about fifteen or so minutes?" Edward challenged.

I cautiously climbed on; I couldn't remember the last time I'd ridden on anyone's back.

He didn't seem to have any issues at all with the weight of me, not that I weighed all that much, I admitted ruefully, and with his added strength…

Then he took off running and I instantly regretted my decision. Had he been running at a normal human pace it would have been hazardous enough, but he was fast, sprinting like someone who ran at the Olympics, not at superhuman speed but far, far faster than he had any right to be. Suffice to say, it was a bumpy ride.

"Edward… Cullen… if you… hit… a tree…," I forced out between gritted teeth in his ear, but he let out a yell of exhilaration as we bounded over a bush. I didn't think he was sticking to the path.

"You know you can just call me Ed like everyone else," he replied as cheerfully as I'd ever heard him, and I wanted to call him something that rhymed not with Ed but with 'Rick', but let it go in favor of trying not to faint and fall off his back.

The forest was a green blur around us, but eventually he began to slow and the trees started to thin out. Ed was at a jog by the time we came out right beside Toy Truck, and I was about to puke. I staggered around regaining my bearings while he tried to hide his amusement and repeatedly asked if I was alright to drive home.

"Yes," I gasped. "Just give me a moment."

"Maybe next time you should close you eyes," he suggested in a tone that was far too even to not be masking a laugh.

"There will be no next time." I fished out my keys and looked at him, then at Toy Truck. "Get in."

"Are you _sure_ you're alright to drive?"

"You could always _run_ home."

He got in.

_And this is my latest confession; I hope you hear about it._

_\- Lagwagon, 'Confession'_


	14. Chapter 14

_Yes, I know this chapter is shorter than usual, but it couldn't be helped. Massive parts of the original chapter had to be left out, because, alas, in this story Edward, while creepy, is not a creep that stalks sleeping teenage girls. So no long chat in Bella's bedroom about her talking in her sleep. Sorry if anyone's put out by that. But never fear! Next chapter we meet the Cullens! ALL of the Cullens. Should be fun. Anyways, this chapter is mostly the come-down from the previous chapter, not all that much happens, mostly lighthearted. Which I think we all need. And I'm once again amazed by the responses I get to this little passion project; that so many people seem invested in this story I'm telling is both absurd and really, really cool. I hope to do a 'answer all questions' round, maybe in the last chapter or so, where I can address all the questions I've received over the course of this story, and give everyone some insight as to why certain things have been changed while others remain fairly similar to the original story, yada yada. Thank you to jansails, Guest (lol), snowflakelover, muffinmom, and keeper of logolepsy for your reviews, Dawn is coming, ForeverTwilite, Laura Beth Luck, SecretWriter010, Sephrenia1, Shamatt0403, Tina1970, azilia, boydroses, .10, jdc0630, julieide, kakins48, keeper of logolepsy, nicurn96, tricia2475, vrgo, and yuriana for your follows, and Dawn is coming, SecretWriter010, azilia, jdc0630, and yuriana for your faves._

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I KEPT THE WINDOWS DOWN as we drove back, turning back onto the highway. Through the rare break in the trees, I realized how low the sun was in the sky. How long could we possibly have been in that meadow for? I entertained notions of it being some sort of time locked alternate dimension we'd stumbled across for nearly five minutes, until it dawned on me that for one of the first times we were sitting in comfortable, rather than tense silence. When was the last time this had happened? Sitting in his car listening to music?

As if he'd read my mind, literally, Ed fiddled with the radio until the static faded enough that I could hear the music. I glanced over at him, fighting a smile. "Is this what I think it is?"

"If the band slows down we'll yell some more," he hummed in response.

I shook my head but whistled for a few moments until he changed the station to an eighties rock one instead. I tried to picture the Cullens with perms and smirked to myself, before commenting, "This was probably my parents' prom music."

He smirked as well. "I went to prom in the eighties once or twice."

"Are there pictures?" I inquired innocently.

"None you'll ever see," he retorted, as I snorted and turned back onto the 101.

Now that we'd established what could be called a friendship, my wariness had settled and my curiosity was starting to thrive once again. I mulled over the question in my mind for a few moments before deciding to take the plunge; after all, we'd agreed to be more open with each other, hadn't we? No more walking on egg shells.

"What did you die of, anyways?" I asked as conversationally as you could ask something like that, just as he was fiddling with the volume, and then cringed as 'Tainted Love' blasted through TT's cab.

"Sorry," Ed murmured, switching the radio off entirely, and then glanced at me. "You want to know how I _died_?"

My face heated up. "Well, seeing as we're friends now, I just thought-,"

He seemed to revel in my mortification; I caught a glimpse of that rare impish expression, which I hadn't seen in a while. "Like I said," he snickered, "Are you sure you're human?"

"Humans are fascinated with death," I reminded him frostily. "And I don't want to know all the gory details; it's not like _that_."

He just laughed, and shook his head, and then finally said, "I was very sick. It was the Spanish Influenza. Dad was there in the hospital, working as a doctor, and when given the opportunity to save a life, he took it."

I bit my lip. "What about your parents?"

Ed just shrugged, and I was reminded of just how long ago this had been for him. "They were already gone."

After another moment I asked, "Did it hurt much?"

He seemed to think about it for a moment. "I think it did. But others have had worst experiences, I'm sure. I just remember wanting the pain to stop, and then it did, and when I woke up everything was different."

I tried to imagine what that might be like, to wake up dead, and couldn't. It was too surreal. "Were you angry with him?" I thought I saw the sign for Forks in the distance, up ahead.

"I was in shock," he admitted. "It took a very long time to sink in. But he was lonely. I could see that- and he told me as much, eventually. He'd spent so long apart from everyone else… that kind of isolation, it's like a prison. It gets to be unbearable. I was the first person Dad- Carlisle- had ever attempted anything like that on."

"So it was just the two of you."

"Until he found Esme a few years later, yes."

I debated asking how Esme and the rest had died, but decided he might not be too eager to share the circumstances of his entire family's deaths. We sank back into a quiet as we entered Forks, and by the time we reached my neighborhood the sun was just beginning to set. I'd made good on my promise to Dad, not that it mattered. The cruiser wasn't in the driveway. We sat there, listening to the growl of TT's engine for another moment or two before I pulled the keys out of the ignition.

"Crap," I muttered as I clambered down from the truck and looked around. "Where is your car?"

"I walked over," Ed admitted. "Well… ran."

"Oh." We sort of stood there in the driveway before I glanced back at the house, and he seemed to take this as a cue.

"I should be going home, then."

"You could stay," I blurted out, without even thinking about it. "I mean… until my dad comes home. If you want. It's not as though- I was just going to make myself dinner."

He looked bemused. "It's not like I could join you."

My expression must have looked almost offended, because his face shifted into something a bit more open and vulnerable, and he amended with, "But if you want me to come in, I will."

"Okay," I said almost awkwardly, and as I led him up to the front door I both questioned what I was doing, and acknowledged that this was my first time ever inviting a boy into my home.

In the kitchen, he leaned against the counter and looked on with interest, as if he were watching a TV show, as I microwaved leftover lasagna. We talked while I ate, sitting across from one another at the kitchen table, until I heard a car pulling into the drive. Shit. Dad.

Ed looked torn between vague alarm and amusement. "I don't think he should catch me in here."

"Go out the back door," I urged, scrambling to my feet to go stall Dad in the doorway if need be, but the second I took my eyes off him all I heard was the scrape of his chair being pushed back, and then he was gone. I looked out the kitchen window, squinting into the dusk, but didn't see even a silhouette disappearing into the forest- had he even gone out the back door? It was still locked when I tested it, and just as I turned around Dad came into the kitchen.

"Are you alright?" he asked, and my gaze darted to the chair Ed had been sitting in. He had pushed it in, thankfully.

"Y-yeah. Just thought I heard a noise in the yard, but I think it was just a deer or something," I rambled, taking my seat again. "Do you uh, want some of this?" I indicated my meal with a wavering fork.

He shrugged. "I can get some myself, thanks Bells."

I felt my heart rate starting to slow down as he put his own piece in the microwave, until he asked, "So how was the hike?"

Right. The hike. "Okay. It was um… it was really nice weather for it."

"Your boyfriend leave already?"

I choked on the lasagna in my mouth, and swallowed hard. "Dad-,"

"Bella, you look like a cornered rabbit," he chuckled. "You know I'm not worried. Just glad you two had a nice time."

I swiftly changed the topic to his fishing trip, and pretended to be interested in the variety of bait used over the course of the day while I rinsed my dishes out in the sink. "I think I'm going to go to bed early," I told him over my shoulder. "Being outside all day kind of exhausted me."

"Alright. See you in the morning, sweetheart," Thank God he was as amenable as usual.

Once upstairs, I trudged into my room, then flicked on the light. And then I almost screamed, because there was a figure in the corner.

"Ed," I hissed, when I was certain the strangled yell wasn't going to escape. "I thought you left."

He looked somewhat unapologetic. "There was the chance your dad could have seen me running out of your yard. Didn't want to get arrested."

"Keep your voice down," I warned, paranoid, and made sure my door was firmly shut and locked behind me.

Now he took a step out of the corner he'd been lurking in. "I thought I should say goodnight, anyways. And that- that I really enjoyed today. Aside from…," he grimaced. "Some of my moments."

"I think I'm getting used to your moments," I halfheartedly reassured him, and then paused to listen. I heard the TV downstairs. Good. "But if my dad catches you in my room he's going to flip. He thinks you're an angel."

"But I am," he put a hand on his heart, his expression one of mock indignation, and a laugh bubbled up in my throat.

"Shhh. I know you're really hard to kill… but he'd probably still try."

Ed nodded. "Dad would be annoyed if he had to pick a bullet or two out of me again." He raised a hand in an odd sort of farewell, and retreated to my partially opened window, silently pushing it all the way up.

"You've been shot before?"

He grinned, and then slipped out the window and into the darkness. After a few seconds passed by I hurried over to it, peering outside, but I saw nothing but the soft glow of porch lights up and down the street and parked cars in driveways. "Good night," I muttered, then closed the window.

_This is not just all in your head... Mind over matter makes these things feel so real._

_\- PRVIS, 'Mind Over Matter'_


	15. Chapter 15

_Alright, so I lied. We don't meet all the Cullens, but we do meet all but two of them! As I'm following the chapters of the original story, I'd forgotten that this chapter doesn't cover as much story ground as I thought it had, but it was easier than I expected to write. I'd like to thank everyone for the increased popularity of this story; I was shocked by how much the number of views seemed to spike after last chapter. Hopefully I can get the new few chapters out more quickly, since the plot is about to really start picking up again. Thank you to jansails, snowflakelover, muffinmom, Gidget922, SarcasticBimbo, AuntiePanda, islandgirrrl, Capricorn75, wootmoot, and nickaroos for your reviews, Ayah Papaya, EeWee, Gidget922, Isabella N Edward, MatejaPraznik, MeteorOnAMoonlessNight, Mitzi1958, NanaWillbur, SarcasticBimbo, StelenaClaceLover09, Sunnie79, Tempewick, TwimomJen, Twiolic, angie671, disrae, divyvickie, islandgirrrl, junebugjazzy, moodyval, mrsvixter, pudget12, usherkate98331, wootmoot, and yagalinus0420 for your follows, and AuntiePanda, Gidget922, MatejaPraznik, Mitzi1958, NanaWillbur, OkayAnnie, SarcasticBimbo, StelenaClaceLover09, csp4, galaxy69uk, junebugjazzy, liz. .7, usherkate98331, wizards30, and yagalinus0420 for your faves. _

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING to a grey room, as sunlight fighting (and losing) to push through the clouds slowly and softy brightened the room. For a few seconds I laid there and stared at the ceiling, feeling as though there was something I needed to remember, and then all at once the events of the previous day rushed through my mind.

I scrambled up in bed, my eyes immediately darting over to the window, but it was still closed. He really had gone. For a moment there I had half expected to find Ed standing over my bed, smirking. My legs were sore and aching, and I assumed it was from all the hiking of the previous day. It was probably a good thing I hadn't had to hike back, I admitted to myself as I ran a hand through my hair, which was falling out of its ponytail.

When I thought about it now, everything, the meadow, racing through the trees, it all seemed like a fantastical dream. But nothing had been realer, and I was surprised to find myself almost disappointed, knowing I wouldn't see him today. I was getting too used to weird things, I scolded myself, as I brushed my teeth in the bathroom. The house was silent; I was pretty sure Dad was out. I combed through all the tangles in my hair, and watched TV on the couch while I ate my cereal.

And then, of all things, there was the sound of a knock at the front door. Dad had never installed a doorbell; he rarely got visitors, aside from the Blacks, anyways. I stood up in mute confusion, putting my bowl down on the coffee table. Forks was so small that the chances of it being someone selling something or looking to convert me seemed minuscule. Maybe it was someone looking for Dad, but then, couldn't they have just swung by the station? I eyed the living room window; it looked like there were two silhouettes on the stoop; one was quite small.

No… it couldn't be…

"Bella!" a high pitched voice called out cheerfully, muffled as it was behind the solid wooden door. "It's Alice and Ed! Open up!"

What was _Alice_ doing here? More importantly, why was she here with Ed?

She knocked again, impatiently, and I looked down at myself in dismay. I was wearing a faded tee shirt and baggy sweatpants; my feet were bare and I wasn't even wearing a bra. I uncertainly unlocked and opened the door, crossing my arms over my chest and trying not to look completely taken aback.

Alice looked thrilled at the sight of me, despite my appearance, whereas Ed looked annoyed and profoundly uncomfortable. I tended to think this was directed more at his 'sister' than at me.

"There you are," she nearly cooed, rocking back and forth in a pair of tall, battered black combat boots. "Eddie didn't think you'd answer the door."

"You shouldn't have," he muttered.

"Hi," I said, as if this were all entirely normal. Just another Sunday morning at the Sawn residence, visiting vampires and all… "Uh… can I help you?"

"We're here to take you to meet the family," she chirped, and I looked between her and him in abject horror.

"This was not my idea," Ed interjected sullenly. "I came home yesterday and her and Mom pounced on me."

"Mom," I said faintly. If Rose intimidated me, the vampire older sister, his vampire _adoptive mother _was probably going to be far, far worse.

"You can't blame her," Alice said, defensively. "She's been waiting for you to get a girlfriend for decades."

"Because the last time she tried to match make it went so well," he retorted, face reddening.

"I'm…," I bit my lip and slipped back into silence. I really didn't feel like explaining the 'we're not actually dating but because I'm an idiot-' situation to Alice, and then his entire family.

"I don't want you to worry at all, Bella," Alice was now saying earnestly. "Everyone will be on their _best_ behavior, I swear. We had a family meeting last night, and we all agreed-," she frowned, and then continued, "Well, we all _mostly_ agreed; Rose and Jasper took some convincing-,"

"We should just go," Ed said loudly. "Alice. I'm serious."

"Even Dad said it was a good idea," she shot back. "There's nothing to be ashamed of, and it would make Mom so happy! You know it would."

"There's no need to drag her even more into this-,"

"Oh, don't be an ass," she said dismissively, and then turned away from him completely, her excited hazel eyes on me. "Of course you don't have to come today if you don't want to, Bella, but would you like to?"

Edward was mouthing 'just say no' behind her, but she looked so innocent and eager, in spite of the fact that she was wearing a hoodie covered in tiny skulls, that I found myself caving to my dismay. "I mean…"

"Great, I'll help you get ready! Ed…" Alice pursed her pale lips and glanced at him. "Watch some TV or something."

He opened his mouth to protest, but she had already grabbed me by the hand and was tugging me up the stairs. The strength in her small, delicate hands was almost disturbing, and once in my room I broke free and stared at her.

"Don't worry," she assured me, tucking a stray piece of short hair behind a tiny ear. "We're going to be friends, I think, fairly soon-ish." Then she looked slightly sheepish. "Unless things go poorly… no, no they shouldn't! I don't think they will."

I continued to stare.

"I can see the future," she said apologetically. "I'm sure Ed's told you about how he can read minds… but he can't read yours, isn't that odd? Maybe it's a Singer thing. Your future is…," she paused. "Rather blurry, actually. Like a foggy spot in a mirror."

Mind reading… that I could wrap my mind around, but being able to predict the future?

She seemed to recognize the look in my eyes.

"Oh, I'm not all knowing or anything. Don't worry. I make mistakes all the time, or I see things wrong… And everything changes, every instant, just like that." She snapped her fingers. "Common threads are easy to follow to their natural conclusions… but things aren't always so common. This, for example. Quite uncommon. I've got no idea how it'll all turn out in the end. It's a nice change of pace from the usual. Immortals are so _predictable_."

"I see," I finally said. I didn't see. At all.

She grinned, and then clapped her hands together. "All right, what are we wearing here? Don't worry about dressing up; we're not that stuffy. I mostly just wanted to get the chance to talk to you away from my brother." She rolled her eyes. "Such a worrywart. So moody."

I smiled.

About ten minutes later we descended the stairs, me in a sweater and nice pair of jeans, and with something like a fledgling friendship blooming between us. Alice had had me in stitches laughing while I tried to fix my hair, as she recounted nearly every embarrassing moment of Ed's that she had witnessed- or seen coming.

He was lurking at the bottom of the stairs, and looked relieved to see me in one piece. "We came over in the Volvo, but if you want to take your truck…"

I steeled myself. "Your car's fine."

Alice drove, and if I thought Ed drove recklessly, I was sadly mistaken. She was a madwoman behind the wheel, and I sat in the passenger seat beside her, eyes tightly closed, while Ed leaned forward from the back, berating her every time she took a turn so sharp it was as if we were on a rollercoaster.

To my relief, she slowed as we left the main part of town and crossed over the bridge at the Calawah River, into the outskirts of Forks. Here the houses were fewer, much further back from the road, and bigger. We took another turn, and then I couldn't see any houses at all, just trees in the morning mist, and then we were on a bumpy dirt road, branches scraping at the sides of the car, the forest so dense it was almost dark.

Then the trees seemed to give way and there was a house up ahead; Victorian in design, eggshell white, many windows, and a wraparound porch. It was not so massive that it seemed absurd to find it out here, but it was big enough that I could see it comfortably fitting seven. It had either always been here and been immaculately restored to its former glory, or built like this from the ground up very recently; I couldn't determine which.

"Here we are," Alice hummed under her breath as she parked under the shade of a giant cedar.

"It's lovely," I said honestly, as I got out of the car. The faint rushing of the river was audible, somewhere nearby.

We walked up to the front porch, and I must have slowed slightly in trepidation, because Ed hung back while Alice darted forward to the door, and took my hand. I looked at him, nodded, and we entered after her.

The inside of the house took me off guard; it had obviously been extensively renovated for higher ceilings, more open space. Everything was shades of creamy white and soft greys. I could see straight to the back of the house, where airy French doors were wide open, and beyond them a sprawling lawn and past that, a spot of blue that had to be the river.

The first floor was tastefully decorated, but fairly simple; there were no somber portraits or gaudy statues. The most extravagant thing seemed to be a large piano, and beside it stood Doctor Cullen and a woman who could only be his wife. She was roughly my height, and somewhere in between Rose's curves and Alice's skin and bones, but her face was round and pleasant, and wrinkle free- she didn't look a day over thirty. Her hair was a light brown that fell in loose waves just past her shoulders, and she wore no makeup, nor was she dressed very lavishly.

Esme Cullen was not gorgeous like Rose, or even striking like Alice; she was simply pretty, in a plain, old fashioned way, but her eyes, I noted, were brown like mine, and very warm.

"Bella," she said, and surged forward to take my free hand. I almost stepped back, but found myself worried about offending her, as if she were a relative. Her hand, I was surprised to find, was worn and calloused, like my mom's. Like a mother's.

"I'm Esme, Ed's mother," she said almost anxiously. "I know you've already met my husband and the rest of the family."

"Um… yes," I replied shyly, and looked past her at him. He was smiling in a reassuring, bedside manner. "Hi again, Doctor…,"

"Carlisle is fine," he interrupted me amiably, and I nodded awkwardly just as Alice spoke up.

"Where is everyone? Jazz!"

We all glanced up at the staircase; Jasper was at the top of it. He looked at all of us and then descended it quickly, with catlike grace. I suddenly felt at a little bit more at ease, though I had no idea why, and I stared at him, wondering why his presence had brought this on, before Alice interjected again.

"Don't mind him; he's just trying to lighten the mood. Jazz, you must be out of practice- usually someone like Bella wouldn't even notice." Her tone was teasing, but when I looked over at Ed he looked entirely serious.

"You can…"

"I'm a walking mood stabilizer," Jasper directed this dry response at me, but didn't quite make eye contact. Despite my new, if artificial, ease, he seemed markedly uncomfortable, but doing his best to mask it.

Once again my attention was drawn to the piano. My mom played the piano, or well, had. We'd never had one at home, but there had been one at some library or church, and I remembered her playing that. The rumor on her side of the family was that she'd been something like a prodigy at it as a child, but had given it up as a teen… I'd always wondered why, and wished we'd had one, so I could see her play.

"Are you a pianist, Bella?" Esme suddenly asked, and I flushed.

"No, no… it's very impressive, though."

"That's Ed's," Alice clarified. "The family musician." She smirked at him, and he rolled his eyes.

"You never told me you played an instrument," I accused, if not very seriously.

"You never asked." He looked a little smug.

"You should play for her," Jasper said, sounding slightly sly. "Alice and I will go hunt down Rose and Emmett."

"The cookies," Esme exclaimed. "I forgot! Lisle, come help me them get out of the oven before they're ruined." She pulled her husband away with her a little too obviously, and I blinked at Ed as the area very suddenly cleared out.

"She made cookies? I thought you didn't really-,"

"She thought it would be nice to have something to offer you," he shrugged. "She's worried we'll terrify you- not that I'd blame you."

I wasn't terrified; wary, yes, even Jasper couldn't rid me of that, but to my surprise, I was handling this rather well. I hadn't run screaming from the house yet, at any rate.

Ed took a half step towards the piano. "_Do_ you want me to play?"

I nodded, and stood behind him while he breezed through a scale to warm up. He played softly, and beautifully, but talked over his own music, while keeping his eyes on the keys. "I'm sorry about Alice."

"It's alright… it seems like she means well," I shrugged, trying to be casual about it. "Jasper seems nervous… and Rose and Emmett are avoiding me, aren't they?"

"Jasper is nervous because he's not used to this sort of close contact with a human… he didn't always live with us."

I started. "You mean Car- your dad didn't turn him?"

"No, neither him nor Alice. They found us on their own, and we took them in."

"Oh." What else was there to say? It certainly explained Jasper's unease, and I resolved to not be left alone with him if I could help it. A week or two ago just the thought of blond, blue eyed, boy scout looking Jasper having formerly been a cold blooded killer would have made me feel faint, but now I was completely steady on my feet. I'd gotten through worse. And he didn't seem to hold any ill will towards me, nor did Alice.

Ed ended the melody he'd been playing and stood up, pushing the bench back in. "Do you want to see the rest of the house?"

He took me on a brief tour; the upstairs rooms were spacious, if equipped with unusually thick curtains on the windows. It was when we reached the end of the hall that I stopped completely, just as he was saying, "And this is my dad's office-". Ed broke off at my sudden halt. "What?"

I pointed up wordlessly. An ancient wooden cross hung in display over the doorway. He laughed, and scratched the back of his head. "Well… it's sort of a souvenir."

"I'd say," I muttered. "This has to be the purest example of irony in the world."

"You'd be right," said a voice behind us, sounding amused, and we both turned to see Carlisle Cullen coming down the hall.

_Understand what I've become, it wasn't my design..._

_\- The Cranberries, 'Ode To My Family'_


	16. Chapter 16

_Backstory, backstory, and more backstory. Sorry about that, but it couldn't be helped. The next chapter is the next light one before we introduce our um... serious antagonist, I guess, and then things get dark. I'm now aware that I have to live up to that promise, so, yes. Things get dark. Hang in there, guys. Thank you to Capricorn75, SarcasticBimbo, jansails, snowflakelover, TheEagerScribbler, and csp4 for your reviews, Analitica, Barbara29, Capricorn75, MUW D'Bellegirl, Maplestyle, ReneeGoetz, Rita01tx, Robward's Muse, Tjputvin, daniques1, disrae, kaday, oldmeone, sparkledamnu, and tiffanyashm for your follows, and Barbara29, Belladonna88, Illusion Idony, PandaGirl01, SanguineTaurean, Tjputvin, csp4, dtkat, kvgamble, and tiffanyashm for your faves._

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I AUTOMATICALLY STEPPED ASIDE as Dr. Cullen approached, feeling as if I'd been caught snooping, although the cross was hanging above the doorway plain as day. I struggled to remember what Ed had said about his… father. He'd been turned sometime in the 1600s, making him by far the oldest of them all, and the cross certainly looked at least as old as him. It was not jewel studded or even metallic, and clearly not a crucifix, which would have been even more ridiculous. No, it was simple, dark stained wood. Obviously something had been done to it to keep it from rotting away.

"It was my father's," Carlisle said conversationally, as if we were talking about a new coffee table and not a priceless artifact from a bygone era. "I've had it for a very long time now." He smiled almost sheepishly, as if in apology for carefully skating around the fact that 'a very long time' in this case meant 'over three centuries'.

"It's very… nice," I supplied and managed a polite smile.

"It's a miserable thing to look at," he replied candidly, catching me completely off guard. "My father carried it with him while he accused dozens of innocent people of witchcraft. Some of them hanged, and some of them burned. He lived a life of suspicion and hatred, and he saw humanity as profoundly evil."

I glanced at Ed as Carlisle walked past us and into his office; we followed, me out of curiosity, Ed embarrassedly, as if this was something he'd heard many times before.

"Sometimes," Carlisle continued calmly, "He led hunts for werewolves and vampires, as well. These were far less lucrative, I'm afraid; it was much easier to prove someone a witch, but he persisted, and when he died, I took his place. I was his only child; every other had been a still birth or hadn't lived more than a day, and I was the last. My mother, poor woman, died giving birth to me."

He looked down from us and at his desk, which while old was clearly not as old as the cross, and then back up. "It was my intention to carry on his legacy. I discovered a true coven, living in the sewers beneath the city, and I gathered a group of men to hunt them down. We were fools. Just one of them, one of the ancient ones, who are very rare today, killed three men and left me to bleed out in the street. I dragged my broken body into a cellar and waited to die. Instead I turned into what I had dedicated myself to destroying, and _that_," he chuckled, "Is irony, Bella."

Some sort of spell had been broken; I exhaled a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding and looked around the room. The walls were paneled and covered in bookshelves; it looked more like a study than an office. It was impressive, but not ostentatious; all the books looked well worn and read, and the room was warm, rather than stuffy.

"I don't tell you this to frighten you," Carlisle spoke again, less frankly and more gently this time. "Only so that you can understand where I came from- how we came to live like this. When I realized what I was, I immediately tried to kill myself. I jumped into the sea loaded down with rocks, I took knives to my throat and to my heart, and I walked into fires. And I could still be injured, but it takes more than that for a vampire to die. Starvation, however… That, I might have succeeded at, but I gave in when my mind started to crumble from it, and I fed from a herd of deer. It was then that I realized I could live as monster more… _humanely_. I saw myself as a demon, of course, but I thought that if I could try to live as I had before, only getting my sustenance from animals, I might avoid eternal damnation. I traveled and I studied; my calling was medicine, I realized, and eventually, when blood ceased to have as much of an effect on me, I began to pursue it."

He looked almost fond at the memory.

"In the 1860s, in Italy, I encountered others who, of all the few like me I had encountered, seemed to have a lifestyle closest to my own. They had been alive since before the fall of the Roman Empire, and by pooling their wealth, their intelligence, and their combined talents they were the closest our kind had to a ruling body. The Volturi, we called them, and still call them now."

"They resided in the upper echelon of society, though only by night. They were different; they considered themselves neither men nor monsters, but gods of a sort, a dominant race. They treated feeding from humans not as something that had to be done simply to survive, but as a mark of their superiority. I disagreed," Here his tone stiffened slightly, became more rigid.

"And while we parted on civil terms, I thought it best to leave Europe. I came to America at the turn of the twentieth century, and traveled from city to city and occasionally town to town working as a doctor, primarily in the North. The South was considered a risk; the largest covens had torn themselves apart during the American Civil War, and there were ongoing power struggles among the survivors. In Chicago I encountered Edward, which I'm sure he's told you about, and that was the beginning of this coven, although we prefer to call it a family."

Carlisle was looking at me cautiously, clearly trying to gauge what my response would be. I simply stood there, drinking all of this information in, before slowly nodding. "Thank you for telling me."

"You will never have anything to fear from us," he said solemnly. "And as someone my son has put so much trust in, I hope you understand my sincerity."

The man was so genuine it was very easy to believe him, although I wasn't sure that I wanted to. The story was fantastical; I'd barely gotten used to the idea of the mere existence of vampires, period, never mind the idea of a vampire _government_ and _covens_. The Cullens, I noted, had thus far gone out of their way to not use the term 'coven', either because they thought it would make me uncomfortable or because they truly saw themselves as a family, albeit not a normal one. It wasn't as if I knew any other covens I could compare them to, I reflected dryly.

We left Carlisle there, Ed still quiet until he pushed open yet another door, one we had passed over in lieu of the cross. The back wall of this room was nearly all windows, side by side like mirrors. You could see the river much more clearly, and the mountains looming over it. "And… this is my room," he said under his breath.

All of the other walls were covered in shelving full of either music or books. CDs and records and cassettes were everywhere; the sound system looked like something out of a science fiction movie. Sheet music covered the floor. He hurriedly bent down and scooped some of it up. I had expected his room to be neat to the extreme, everything in its place, but it was a mess. There were peeling posters on the walls, of bands and musicians. The oldest looking ones had concert dates that had occurred over thirty years ago. It was shockingly lived in looking… and very teenage. It was sometimes too easy to forget that he was a teenager, that he was the never ending seventeen, and the room was a stark reminder of that. It was a _boy's_ room. The bed was unmade, the pillows were rumpled.

"So," I said as the silence dragged on, clearing my throat a little. "That… was a lot to take in."

"Yeah."

"And… that's the way it happened. All of it." I examined a record. Elvis Presley, Loving You. I saw him nod out of the corner of my eye; he was looking away. By now I knew him well enough. He was leaving something out.

"What is it?"

Ed exhaled and took the record from me, putting it haphazardly on the closest shelf, which he stared at before he continued. "I had a…. rebellious stage."

"Please don't tell me your rebellious stage involved massacring half a block."

"No," he snapped, and then pressed his lips together and locked his jaw. "No," he repeated in a calmer tone. "I didn't massacre half a block. You have to understand what it was like. Once I started… tuning in to the people around me. They think about awful things. People are- people are _fucked up_. And they think bad things, and they think about doing bad things, and I thought if I could…"

I counted the fact that I was not hyperventilating and just alarmed as a sign of progresss. "That you could what?" I asked tightly.

"That I could… that if I knew a man was planning to kill the next girl that passed by the alley he was standing in… it wouldn't be so bad if I… if I could _save_ her-"

"But how could you know?" I asked, horrified. "How could you know if he was actually going to or just… You can't just look into people's heads-,"

"It wasn't like that," he insisted. "It was only the ones practically screaming it, broadcasting it to the world, but the only one getting the signal was _me_. And if I didn't…"

I tried to imagine that kind of pressure, constantly wondering what voice was true, what to listen to, what…

"But you killed them."

"Yes," Ed agreed, not proudly, not remorsefully. "I killed them because I thought… I thought if I could live the way we seemed _supposed to_, but _save people_\- I thought I was being a hero. It was easy. To pretend."

"You played God."

"I was judge, jury, and executioner, for a little while. Until my parents tracked me down. My dad blamed himself; he saw it as a failure in his… parenting. My mom… she slapped some sense into me," he admitted. "Esme was furious. 'Every life carries weight,' she said to me. 'If you take enough on they will drown out your humanity.' I came back home with them after that."

I regarded him carefully. He was telling the truth. He could have kept it from me, or lied, and I didn't think I would have been able to get past it if he had. I wondered why I wasn't as disturbed as I should have been. All my worst fears had just been proven right. He was a murderer. He had killed people, and I wasn't even sure how much he regretted it. But on the other hand… had I been in his shoes, I couldn't say I wouldn't have done the same. I wanted to ask how many, how long, but what was the point? Would it change anything? Like it or not, it was in the past.

"I'm not asking you to forgive me," Ed said finally.

"That's not my job," I said, and we came to a mutual understanding, and the tension left my shoulders and drained down my back.

The door wasn't even halfway closed, but Alice managed to burst in all the same, making me jump and him scowl.

"I thought we'd catch you in the middle of something," she sounded disappointed. "It was a distinct possibility!"

My face heated up, but fortunately no one seemed to notice.

"Pay up," Jasper was telling her. He seemed more at ease, or maybe he was just making me feel that he seemed more at ease. Thinking about it too much was going to give me a migraine.

"Anyways," she blurted out, eyes darting between us. "I'm _certain _there's going to be a massive storm tonight. And when have I ever been wrong about the weather?"

"Alaska, 1964," Jasper drawled, looking amused.

"New York, 1977," Ed added smugly.

"Well, we made it out fine, didn't we?" she said dismissively. "Honestly. My _point_ is Emmett wants to play ball tonight."

"In a thunderstorm?" I asked incredulously.

All three exchanged looks. I had the feeling there was some joke here I was being left out of.

"We need thunder if Emmett's up to bat," Ed snickered.

"Bella, you'll come, won't you?" Alice's eyes widened pleadingly to the point where it was impossible to look away. Jasper's obvious enthusiasm was catching. Like measles.

"Only if I'm not going to end up soaking wet," I found myself saying. This was a terrible idea. This was a really terrible idea. I didn't even _like_ baseball.

"You'll love it," Alice promised, then winked. "I can see it now."

_Long ago, a young man sits and plays his waiting game..._

_\- James Taylor, 'Long Ago and Far Away'_


	17. Chapter 17

_Andddd everything just gets a lot worse from here on out. Sorry, folks. Thank you to SarcasticBimbo, jansails, snowflakelover, muffinmom, csp4, nickaroos, and Capricorn75 for your reviews, HaruArashi, PandaGirl01, Quicksilver'sMarvel, .7, domen913, eesti, farkaskristza, lorilei292000, lovedavidbeckham, maswaney, msdngrc, quinzy, riann2, and telaviv for your follows, and angie671, boydroses, csp4, domen913, eesti, heathermichelle76, and jello2298 for your faves. _

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I HAD SPENT MORE TIME at the Cullens' home than I had realized, but by now I was used to the way everything seemed to slow down around them. Tiny pinpricks of rain were just beginning to fall, the type that stung when they landed on your skin, as Ed and I left. The storm wasn't supposed to hit until the evening, and while part of me was tempted to just wait with them until then, Dad would have a fit if I was missing all day. He was surely home by now.

Ed and I drove back in the Volvo in a sort of anticipatory, semi-excited state. I was- happy wasn't the right word for it. I was satisfied, I supposed, because for once everyone seemed to be being honest with me. _He_ was being honest with me. All of my questions were slowly but surely being answered. It was like finally starting to unravel a massive knot; you couldn't help but feel just a little relieved, even elated. And he seemed… content. Strange, I know, for someone who I'd grown to see as someone constantly in a state of conflict, usually internal. But Ed seemed at peace with himself, and with me, at the moment, and we both drank that in all the way across Forks.

And then as we approached the house all that peace vanished, because I recognized the dark, beaten up car in the driveway. It was Billy Black's- Jake's, really.

"Shit," Ed groaned, as he pulled in beside the curb.

I felt sick. I could see them on the porch; Billy in his wheelchair, staring directly at us, and Jake standing beside him, looking like he wanted to be anywhere else.

I wasn't sure what I had assumed; that because my dad had seemed okay with the idea of me dating Ed, the human, that magically the issue of his best friend knowing or at least suspecting that my 'boyfriend' was a vampire would just disappear?

"He's going to tell my dad," I muttered.

"He's got no right-," Ed started, furiously, and then cut himself off. "We've kept our side of the treaty." He sounded almost plaintive.

"I'll deal with them," I said finally, wondering how on earth I was going to 'deal' with them.

He regarded me warily. "Alright. I shouldn't be hanging around with them right here, anyways. I'll see you in a few hours." He paused. "At least call to warn us beforehand if your father ends up leading an angry mob armed with crucifixes and garlic."

I rolled my eyes, and hopped out, half jogging, half slipping across grass just starting to wet up to the porch. "Hi," I said more shrilly than I meant to. "My dad- my dad's been out all day, I'm not sure when he'll be back."

Jake at least looked happy to see me. Billy was staring at me steadily, like a parent would when they knew a child had misbehaved, but weren't quite sure of the full extent of the damage yet.

"It's no problem," he said slowly. "We just wanted to drop some food off. Harry Clearwater's famous fish fry."

"I love fish fry," I lied cheerfully, and fumbled to unlock and open the door.

"I got it," Jake said quickly, and darted forward to hold it for me and his dad to pass through. I felt trapped as soon as the door swung shut behind us. It was barely one in the afternoon, but it felt much later due to the lack of light. I turned on the living room lamp and hurried into the kitchen to flick on the overhead light.

"Thanks for bringing it over for us," I said, turning back to face them and fighting the urge to start wringing my hands. "Dad loves fish- I think he's out fishing right now, actually." I carefully avoided eye contact with Billy. Jake smiled at me nervously.

"Jake, run out to the car and get that new picture of Becky." Billy said calmly. "Charlie'll want to see that, might as well drop it off while we're here."

"Dad-,"

"It's probably buried in the trunk somewhere, go get it before it starts raining harder." He didn't sound in the mood to be argued with, and Jake shot me an apologetic glance before stalking out the front door.

I was putting the fish fry in the freezer when he spoke again.

"Bella."

I closed my eyes for a moment, then shut the freezer a little harder than I had intended, before turning around. My wet sneakers squeaked loudly on the tiled floor. "Yes."

It was less of a question and more of a dare for him to say anything; I was annoyed in spite of my own nerves. Did he really think I was completely oblivious at this point? I couldn't argue that hanging around a bunch of vampires was _sane_, but it wasn't as if I had sought them _out_.

"Your dad and I have been good friends for a long time now. Since he was your age, actually. And I know we haven't been around each other much in a long, long time, but I consider the two of you family."

"Mr. Black-,"

"Let me finish," Billy said firmly. I leaned back against the fridge, my mouth set in a tight line.

"You don't want to make a habit of spending a lot of time with one of the Cullens. I'm not sure what you've heard-,"

"I've heard more than you think," I interrupted him icily.

He looked taken aback, but pressed on. "Well, whatever it is, you've heard… You should know most rumors have a starting point in fact."

"I know the facts."

"Do you?" He let that sink in then, immediately after; "Does Charlie?"

My stomach turned over. "He knows I'm dating Edward," I retorted weakly. "And he respects the Cullens a lot. He thinks they're- they _are_ good people."

They had better be, I thought grimly, since I was now going up to bat for them.

"Maybe this is none of my business," Billy conceded, but didn't look very penitent. "But I'd rather you think I was a nosy old man than let something happen that could have been prevented."

"_Nothing's_ going to happen."

His gaze seemed to say 'are you sure about that?'.

I exhaled in frustration, knowing I probably looked pleading. "Billy. Please. I- We know what we're doing. You have to trust me."

He regarded me for a long moment, then slowly nodded just we heard Jake stomping back into the house. "We left it at home, Dad." He sounded annoyed.

Billy sighed. "Then I guess we better be going. You take care, Bella. Tell your dad we stopped by."

I nodded silently as they left, then hovered by the door until they had pulled out of the driveway. I felt reasonably sure that Billy wasn't about to out the Cullens to Dad, but the sick feeling still lingered.

So I did homework. What else was there to do? In the late afternoon the phone rang downstairs; it was a welcome break from Trig. It was Jess, eager to tell me all the details about the dance the night before, which I'd nearly forgotten about. She and Mike had officially made out, Lauren and Tyler had 'probably had sex in the boys locker room', and Angela and Eric had ended up dancing with other people. It was sort of hard for me to concentrate, but I did my best to focus until I heard Dad coming in the front door.

"My dad's home, Jess, I gotta go."

"I'll tell you more tomorrow," she vowed, and I hung up as he came into the kitchen.

"Hi Dad. Billy and Jake stopped by before, to drop off some fish fry," I said nervously, but he didn't look suspicious, horrified, or angry. I seemed to be safe.

"Great," he said happily. "It was a good day for fishing, Bells, but it's really starting to come down out there. Supposed to be a big storm tonight, everyone's saying."

I nodded uneasily, and it wasn't until we were finishing up dinner that I broached the subject. "Uh, Ed asked me to come over to play baseball with this family tonight." I busied myself with scraping my plate with my fork into the garbage so as to not have to see his reaction.

"This late?" he asked in confusion.

I nodded awkwardly. "It's when Dr. Cullen gets off work, and they all like to play together… ItoldEdhecouldpickmeupatsix," I finished all in a rush.

"Bella," Dad said reprovingly. "It's a school night, for one thing-,"

"I finished all my homework," I assured him. "And I'll be back by eight."

He glanced out the kitchen window. "In a thunderstorm?"

"It's always about to storm here," I pointed out.

He sighed. "If you're determined to… I want to talk to him when he gets here, so don't just run out the door."

"I won't," I promised, and hurried upstairs almost giddily to get ready for the game. Windbreaker, check. Hair in a tight ponytail, check. Boots, check.

I raced down the stairs when I heard the loud knocking, almost tripping off of the last step in order to beat Dad to the front door. Ed immediately stepped inside once I opened the door, which I couldn't blame him for, seeing how it was raining cats and dogs outside by now.

"Good to see you, Edward," Dad spoke up from behind me, and I looked between the two of them anxiously as I shut the door against the pounding rain.

"You too, Chief Swan," Ed replied politely. "I'm sorry I haven't had the chance to meet you yet."

"That's alright, son. Bella told me you're going to play baseball. You must have really won her over if you're getting her interested in sports," he snorted.

I rolled my eyes not very subtly.

"I hope so," Ed said a bit hesitantly, glancing over at me and my exasperated expression.

I flipped up the hood of my jacket, trying to signal that we should get out now while we still could.

"I'll be back home before you know."

"Be careful," Dad warned us, unknowingly echoing Billy, and stood in the doorway watching us dash through the rain to the car.

Ed drove slowly, even for him, and I was grateful, because it was difficult to make out what was further than two feet in front of us on the road. We headed back in the general direction of the Cullen homestead, over the now raging river and through the woods, but we took a different, extremely bumpy side road. I was surprised the Volvo could even make it up it.

But by the time the car came to a halt, the rain seemed to have miraculously lightened, or maybe it was just having difficultly penetrating through the treetops. The wind had picked up to make up for it, however, and I hunched my shoulders against it, staring into the dark tree line.

"We're going to have to run again," I said dismally.

"_I'm_ going to have to run," he corrected with a bit of a smirk. "You just have to hold on."

I grumbled and clambered onto his back, holding my breath as he straightened up with little to no effort exerted. "It won't be that long of a run," he assured me. I grumbled something in reply.

But Ed was right. He ran for less than five minutes, and I kept my eyes shut the entire time, until I felt him slowing to a jog, than a walk. I slipped off his back as soon as possible, noting that we were both splattered with mud already, and brushed at my jeans. It was hopeless.

"Lead the way," I shrugged, and followed him out of the forest into a massive open field. It had to be as big as the high school's football field, and Forks took its football team as seriously as any other small town. It was barely raining at all in the field, and to my surprise, the wind seemed to glance over it. The grass barely moved.

The rest of the Cullens were grouped in the middle of it. I was almost surprised to see Emmett and Rose there, but there they were. If Rose didn't look thrilled to see me at Ed's side, at least she didn't seem ready to rip my throat out. Emmett offered his usual cocky grin. Thunder rumbled gently in the distance.

"Bella, you can help Mom ref," Alice spoke up energetically, her small hands on her hips. "It's me, Eddie, and Dad versus Emmett, Rose, and Jazz. Em, you're up to bat first."

His grin only widened. "If you say so."

I fell into step alongside Esme as the others raced ahead, faster than they had any right to be. "You don't play?"

"Oh no," she laughed. "I'd rather make sure things are fair. They cheat like nobody's business, you know."

She sounded so fondly maternal it almost took me aback. "You sound like a good mom," I said quietly.

"I try," she sighed. "I was a mother before I met Carlisle, but I lost that baby, and I lost that life. I promised myself that I would make up for it this time around. I like to think I have."

I had no idea what to say, but I was distracted by the sight ahead of. Emmett was in fact up to bat, swinging the metal bat so fast it was a blur. Alice perched on the pitcher's mound like a bird, and then released the ball. I barely saw it before Jasper held it aloft from behind Emmett. He'd missed.

It was tossed back to Alice, who caught it one handed, no glove, of course, and she immediately pitched it again. This time the bat connected with an unearthly crack like lightening hitting the ground. My ears rang as I watched the ball disappear into the trees, and Ed shoot after it like a missile. Emmett was racing from base to base, but then stopped and yelled something in outrage; Ed had reappeared, ball in hand, a smug smile across his face.

"Emmett's a hard hitter, but no one's faster than Edward," Esme was saying fondly as I stared in disbelief.

The game continued like this, occasionally interspersed with fits or arguing among players; they trash talked one another constantly, I was amused to discover. And then Alice, up to bat, paused mid-swing. The ball whizzed by her, right into Edward's hand.

"Oh _no_," I heard her murmur, and everyone immediately froze.

"What's changed, Alice?" Carlisle asked far too calmly.

"The three nomads- they changed course, just now, they heard us playing- they were supposed to just pass through!" She looked around wildly. "I don't- this wasn't supposed to happen."

"What nomads," I demanded, seeing the way everyone's face changed.

"That's why I said-," Rose started through gritted teeth.

"Be quiet, I'm trying to pick them up," Ed snapped at her, and closed his eyes briefly. "They're very close. They're just curious, they've gone so long without seeing any of us…," His eyes opened and he looked at me. They all looked at me.

"They're… nothing will happen since I'm with all of you, right?" I asked uncertainly. "I mean…"

"They sure as hell had better not try anything," Emmett began heatedly. "This isn't their territory, they've got no right-,"

"I can't outrun all three of them with her," Ed was telling Carlisle and Esme desperately. "We have to stay here."

"Nothing is going to happen," Carlisle said firmly, catching my probably petrified gaze. "They're nomads, not wild animals. They'll know better than to disrespect an established coven."

And then even I, with my human eyesight, caught the moment at the edge of the field, and I began to doubt his second statement.

_It's all about the game and how you play it, all about control and if you can take it._

_\- Motorhead, 'The Game'_


	18. Chapter 18

_And now things start moving very quickly. Lots of action ahead, folks. Prepare yourselves. Thank you to jansails, SarcasticBimbo, Capricorn75, nickaroos, snowflakelover, and csp4 for your reviews, Lily Adrienne, MariaVB, Mistress-Volturi-09, Sarai GN, eloradora, and jennings23 for your follows, and MariaVB, Sarai GN, csp4, and guardian of durins line for your your faves. Above all, thank you to everyone who has helped get this story to over 100 reviews, over 150 followers, over 50 favorites, and over 10,000 views. I'm blown away by the amazing response I regularly get for something I do for fun. _

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THEY DIDN'T SEEM HUMAN, was my first thought, as the three nomads stepped out into the open. First of all, they didn't so much as step as… I wasn't sure how to describe it. The way they moved was not the way normal human beings, even the way the Cullens, moved. They moved like animals wearing human skins; they seemed to walk with their whole bodies, and kept relatively low to the ground, as if at any moment prepared to go onto all fours.

To be completely honest, it was frightening to watch them. They kept shoulder to shoulder, none of them any further in front of or behind the others. Their gait wasn't fearful or timid, but cautious nonetheless. I felt slightly reassured by that; they clearly weren't comfortable being outnumbered, for all of their curiosity. As they got closer I could start to make out their faces and appearances, and they seemed more human when they weren't just figures on the edge of my vision.

'They' were two men and a woman. One of the men seemed older, certainly in at least his mid thirties. The other man, as well as the woman, both looked to have been turned in their prime; neither appeared a day older than twenty five.

The older man looked Mediterranean; he was olive skinned, with a ponytail of dark hair that brushed his broad shoulders. His build was musclebound, but he wasn't very tall, and from what I could make out, he was openly smiling.

The younger man was nondescript; you could have passed him on the street and not looked twice. He was vaguely tall and vaguely built; neither lanky nor brawny, neither thin not husky. His facial features weren't as easy to make out, either; they were shadowed by the ragged baseball cap he wore. He had a fading tan, and his sideburns looked dirty blonde.

The woman was the most attention catching of all of them; she was small, not as tiny as Alice, but petite nonetheless, but her hair more than made up for it. It was waist length, flaming red, and wildly curly and thick, littered with twigs and leaves. Her eyes were a very distinct green, like Ed's, but brighter, almost feline. She looked almost alien, and nearly slunk towards us, by far the most physically threatening of all three, despite being the smallest.

Their clothing was another clue; they wore typical hiking outfits, but the clothes were worn down, none of it seeming to fit any of them quite right, either too loose or too tight, and they were barefoot, all three of them. While not covered in filth, they were far from clean, and they certainly looked like nomads.

They paused a good ten or so feet from us, and the smiling man stepped forward.

"Laurent," he said warmly, by way of introduction, and nodded at the two silent companions just behind him. "James and Victoria."

James cocked his head slightly to the side in greeting, and Victoria stayed motionless.

Carlisle didn't move from where he'd positioned himself as they approached, him and Esme in front of everyone else, Emmett and Jasper just behind them. At some point Ed had taken hold of my hand, and I'd forgotten to dislodge it from my own. Now it was locked in place.

Carlisle nodded carefully. "We're the Cullens- I'm Carlisle, and this is my wife, Esme, and our children; Edward, Rosalie, Emmett, Alice, Jasper, and Bella." He'd tacked my name on at the end so seamlessly I almost didn't notice; I felt a flood of gratitude, and then wondered if that was just Jasper.

"A family," Laurent said, sounding surprised. "How lovely."

Victoria made a noise that sounded like either an exclamation or a bark of laughter.

James shifted in position ever so slightly.

"We heard you playing from the woods," Laurent continued, good-naturedly. "It's been so long since we've had some proper company."

"I can understand that," Carlisle seemed to sympathize, but even I recognized the undercurrent of warning in his tone.

Laurent looked over us carefully once again. I tried not to look directly at him, and concentrated on Ed's hand in mine. It was shaking.

"But we seemed to have just missed the game, unfortunately. We'll have to join in another time."

"Where are you headed?" Carlisle sounded relieved but trying his best to mask it.

"North," James spoke up for the first time; his voice was slightly hoarse, as if he hadn't spoken in a long time, but calmly measured.

"We keep a permanent home here; there's others similar to us up near Denali."

This was the first I'd heard of any other coven besides the Volturi; the nomads looked as shocked as I felt.

"We'll have to stop along the way and pay them a visit as well, then," Laurent finally said, clearly fighting to regain his smooth mask of pleasant neutrality.

"We'd ask that you wait until you're out of our area before doing any… any hunting," Esme ventured. "We do- we do like to keep a low profile." She sounded almost nervous, and the nomads seemed aware of this.

Laurent smiled all the more. "Of course."

"Is the human a pet then, or are you saving her as a special treat?" Victoria spoke clearly for the first time; her voice was high and sweet and younger than expected. She was looking directly at me, a knowing little smile on her face. I fought not to tremble where I stood.

James snarled something at her so quickly and so low it was impossible to make out; she looked like a rebuffed child, and shrunk back slightly, but her eyes remained bright.

"You do have a human with you- your combined scents almost hide her, but James and Victoria have noses like bloodhounds," Laurent spoke casually, admiringly, but now focused on me as well.

"James is the real talent," Victoria dared to speak up again, her hand momentarily resting on the man's arm. He tolerated it, and took one simple stride forward, as if testing the waters.

The Cullens closed ranks instantaneously; Ed's grip on my hand only tightened as he carefully maneuvered himself in front of me, and Carlisle and Esme moved in front of him while Emmett and Jasper both stepped forward, Emmett looking every bit the linebacker ready to charge, and Jasper dropping into a position almost close to that of the nomads; he kept low and ready to move at any moment. Alice and Rose, to my surprise, filled in the gaps around me.

"Bella," said Carlisle more coldly than I had ever heard him, "Is family."

Laurent blinked, and raised his hands in a gesture of assurance. "I see." His tone made it clear that he didn't. "You have quite the unusual family, Carlisle."

"We get that a lot," Emmett growled.

"We'll respect whatever claim on her you have," he went on calmly. "Besides, we just hunted a few days ago outside Seattle. We're all far from starving."

I felt my stomach roil as he glanced at his companions pointedly as if to remind them at that.

"Let's talk back at the house," Carlisle suggested. "The weather's getting worse." Now the meadow was finally getting pelted with rain and wind, but the nomads seemed oblivious to it.

Before Laurent could even respond, I was being whisked across the field by Ed, although when he set me down once we were past the tree line, I realized Alice and Emmett had followed. I was also in shock, I realized, although not as badly as I had been in Port Angeles. I just felt vaguely dizzy, and my ears were pounding. Part of me was surprised I had made it out of this alive.

Ed was still shaking. "He was so loud-," he kept saying. "He was practically screaming it- he had to have known I was listening, he had to have known-,"

"Calm down," Alice said soothingly. "We can't know that the tracker will do anything for sure."

He stared at her, hard. "Can you see it?"

She paused. "Right now it's changing so fast I don't know what I see. There's too many possibilities, I…," She trailed off, and glanced over at me and Emmett. "Bella, I'm sorry. Truly."

My focus was on Ed. "What's going on?" I demanded, shakily. "Tell me."

"The tracker- James- is not going to listen to anyone; not my dad, not his friend Laurent- The moment he got close enough to smell you he knew, I could hear him chanting it in his head- '_that one, that one, that one'_-,"

"What- why does he want to kill me, I'm not his Singer-," Was it possible to be a Singer for more than one vampire?

"He wants to because he's a sick fuck, that's why," Emmett spat out. "Probably think it's a game, him and the ginger bit-,"

"Enough, Emmett," Ed cut him off in frustration. "We need a plan. Mom and Dad and Jasper and Rose can only stall him for so long."

"Alright," Emmett shot back, "How about we wait for him to come to us, and I snap his scrawny neck-,"

"Victoria and Laurent will retaliate," Alice said sharply. "That's obvious enough."

He rolled his eyes. "Then if we have to kill them all-,"

I looked between them in growing panic. "I don't want-,"

"Let's go!" Ed barked. "Now. Let's just get to the car. Bella, get on my back."

For once I didn't argue about the merits of me riding on his back through the trees. We reached the Volvo in record time. I scrambled into the passenger side as he revved the engine, and Emmett and Alice clambered into the back, still arguing fiercely over what to do. The car tore down the winding dirt side road and skidded out onto the highway. The wind was beginning to howl. Ed didn't head back the way we had come, though. Instead he headed south, out of Forks.

"What are you doing?" I snapped frantically. "We can't just leave! I have to go home!"

"You can't go home," he snapped back. "It's not safe. We have to get as far away from here as possible, hide out until James gets bored and gives it up- then we can come back."

"No!" I almost yelled. "Edward, are you insane?! My dad will think you kidnapped me!"

"If you go home and stay there, your dad will be dead. James will kill anyone who gets in his way- I heard his thoughts, Bella, he's single-minded."

"I can't just leave town," I shot back, while trying not to think about the horrifying possibility of losing Dad. "I can't leave my dad like that- not like-,"

The Volvo only sped forward.

Alice and Emmett had stopped debating long enough to listen in.

"Ed, she has a point," she said quietly. "He'll pick up her scent in town and follow it to her home, and when he finds her missing but her father there…"

"I'm not. Bringing. Her. _Home_." I had never heard him this furious.

"They'll be able to stall him for at least a few hours," Emmett reasoned. "If we can get him cornered-,"

All three erupted into arguing again, while I sat there silently, mind racing.

"I HAVE A PLAN!" I finally screamed over the din. "Pull over."

For a second he looked like he was going to ignore me. I undid my seatbelt, and put a hand on the door threateningly. He pulled over.

"You take me home," I said in a forcibly calm tone.

"We're not-,"

"Just listen. You take me home. We have a few hours, like Emmett said. I go home, act like everything's normal, make like I'm going to bed. You wait nearby in case he does show up. I pack up some things, and sneak out, leave a note telling my dad that I hate it here and I'm going home to Phoenix. We make sure this James is coming for me, and we run. He'll go straight after us and not bother with anyone in town. Phoenix is huge. It'll be much harder for him to find us there, and we can wait and plan our next move." I took a deep breath. "It makes more sense than us just running off to God knows where. But look. I should go with Alice. Edward- Ed, you and Emmett stay here."

Ed looked about ready to explode. Emmett did not seem pleased.

I sighed. "If all of you just conveniently go missing at the same time as me, it's going to look very suspicious to my dad. The _police chief_. If the majority of you are still here, the rest of you can try to get to James before he gets to me, and avoid getting arrested for abduction."

"I like this plan," Emmett said suddenly, surprising me. "But Jasper should go along, too. We're more than capable of-,"

"This is idiotic," Ed retorted, looking as if he'd just been betrayed. "I should go-,"

"You should _not_," I hissed. "This is the best option. For God's sake, trust me for once, the way I trust you."

The car went silent, but that seemed to get through to him, and he stared at me for a moment before nodding tensely. "Fine. _Fine_." He looked at Alice. "Can you and Jasper-,"

"Don't ask me if we can handle it," she drawled, sounding almost bored, and then she flashed her teeth. _All_ of her teeth. I recoiled in horror, while Emmett smirked, and Ed just grimaced.

"I think you know the answer, Eddie."

_Tell us nothing, tell us lies; revelations, no surprise, tonight the hunt for you._

_\- Goldfrapp, 'Hunt'_


	19. Chapter 19

_Action? Check. Drama? Check. Mean Girls references? Check. Come on, what more could you ask for? I wrote this all in one night because my weekend is packed, so please excuse any weirdness. Thank you to snowflakelover, SarcasticBimbo, PandaGirl01, MusetteBlanchard, csp4, Capricorn75, muffinmom, and nickaroos for your reviews, 25thNight, .101, Jeni K, Ladybear0506, Mooah, MrsDoey, Vagabonda, VictoriaVi, alaskangirl, candi9699, kim67255, lilpeanut30, mariga79, mysticalunicorn32, nebfan51, poppy90210, and sherylb for your follows, and .101, KnittingFreak, MrsDoey, Vagabonda, alaskangirl, candi9699, csp4, gemini73, mysticalunicorn32, and slwortham for your faves. _

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE LIGHTS WERE STILL ON, I noted as I hurried up the driveway towards the front porch. That was slightly reassuring; for some reason I managed to convince myself, as I approached the front door, that if anything had happened to Dad the lights would be off. Despite my display of bravado (and pretty cunning plan, I thought defensively), I was completely terrified that I was going to walk into a bloodbath, or, possibly worse, no bloodbath, just James.

But I wasn't terrified of James; it perplexed me, but I was more scared of the general idea of him, someone who wanted to hurt me for no reason other than for his own amusement, than him as a person. If he even counted as a person. I'd never even seen his eyes. And maybe because of that, it was easy to think of him, for now, as a menacing figure only found in fairy tales and urban legends, a boogeyman, not a real threat. What I was terrified of was him solidifying himself as something or someone to fear by hurting me or someone else. Mostly someone else. At this point my first concern clearly wasn't risk to myself.

I glanced back at the Volvo at the very end of the driveway as I put my hand on the door knob, tried to look calm and composed, and went inside. I had not said goodbye to Ed, worried he would stop me if I wasted any time getting out of the car. Before I could dwell on it any further, I stepped into the living room and nearly jumped out of my skin as a figure swiftly stood up from where they'd been sitting on the couch. But it was Dad, and the TV was off.

"You were barely gone an hour," he said, perplexed, glancing out the living room window. "The weather get a lot worse?"

"Yeah," I replied breathlessly, almost speechless because I was so relieved to see him alive and well. "Yeah, it did."

He nodded slowly, and then, "Bells, you'd better shower tonight, you're soaked and covered in mud."

I nodded and darted up the stairs. Inside my room, I carefully examined the window and my possessions- nothing looked touched, and it didn't seem like anyone but me had been in here recently, so I relaxed somewhat. The prospect of taking a shower with a literal serial killer roaming around wasn't very appealing, but I needed to act normal if I wanted Dad to go to bed and not stay up watching the door.

But first I needed to pack. I swiftly locked my door and rummaged under my bed for the duffel bag I'd brought up with me, emblazoned with the logo of a gym Mom had gone to back in Phoenix. I felt along the side and unzipped a section, pulling out a folded up, ancient wallet. My emergency cash supply, a little less than a hundred dollars, was right where I'd left it. I felt considerably less paranoid and considerably cleverer now, seeing as it was coming in handy.

I moved to the dresser and started yanking out clothes left and right, not really caring much about what matched or looked good when I was planning on fleeing for my life and such. I packed haphazardly and quickly, and when I was done I zipped up the duffel bag, shoved it back under the bed, and headed into the bathroom to shower.

My shower was quick and so hot it nearly burned, and I viciously scrubbed, the way I had… that other time. Nothing had happened to me, nothing would happen to me, I assured myself, but I felt that same unclean feeling again, like my skin was crawling with invisible bugs. My hair especially bothered me; I put it up in a messy bun.

It was only a quarter to eight when I checked the time, and it bothered me. I sat down at the computer and booted it up, drumming my fingers against the desk impatiently. It wasn't a possibility I even wanted to face, but if things did go wrong, I felt like I should leave behind something other than a bullshit note about running away. I clicked on Microsoft Office, and stared at the blank document before beginning to type.

_I didn't want to leave but I felt like I had to. I'm sorry I can't explain it any more than that but I didn't disappear because I was angry at either of you. Please understand that. If you're reading this, then I didn't come home to either of you, and I'm sorry. I know you both love me very much, and I love you. Thank you for everything. I'm sorry. I love you both so much._

_Bella_

It read like a suicide note, and it was more stilted and awkward than what I had wanted to say, but it would do in the worst case scenario. At least it might give them some closure, if they never saw me again. I saved the document, titled it MOM AND DAD PLEASE READ and left it as a shortcut for someone to immediately see if they ever turned on the computer. I dressed not in pajamas but a fresh pair of clothes.

And then I tried to at least get some sleep, setting my alarm for eleven PM. That seemed like cutting it a bit close, but there was no way I was making it out of the house unnoticed before then. Sleep was easier said than done, with me wondering if a vampire was going to come crashing through the window at any moment, but I did drift off a little. I dreamed I was being chased through the old condo in Phoenix by coyotes. One landed on my chest and I swore I could feel it's breath on me before I woke up with a gasp.

It was two minutes before the alarm was set to go off and someone was tapping quietly on my window. I was startled, but I doubted James was the type to knock and ask to come in, so I pushed back the covers and approached it. It was Alice, her pale face almost glowing in the dark. I slowly opened the window and she scrambled into the room, a finger to her lips.

'Are you ready?' she mouthed. 'James is close.'

I nodded, my chest suddenly constricting, and hastily pulled my boots on and slung the duffel bag over my shoulder. I'd scrawled a quick note to Dad before falling asleep, and I left it on my pillow.

_Dad, I'm sorry, but I hate it here and I have to leave. I'm going back to Phoenix, and I will call you and Mom when I get there. This is not your fault. Please don't worry about me, I'll be fine._

I hesitantly approached the window, not exactly sure how I was going to make it to the ground. My climbing skills were nonexistent. Jasper was crouched on the very edge of the roof like a cat as Alice and I scrambled out. I pulled the window shut behind us.

"I'll take the bag," Alice whispered. "Hold onto Jasper, he'll get you down."

She stepped off the side into the dark and vanished. I looked at Jasper warily. He offered a somewhat sheepish smile, and I clung onto him very stiffly as he practically crawled down from the roof to the porch like a spider with me hanging on. It was extremely disturbing, but I was too busy visualizing someone leaping out at us at any second to be very bothered by it. I could practically feel my heart clawing its way into my throat.

I followed Alice and Jasper across the yard, they clearly slowing down so as not to leave me in the dust and we made it to Toy Truck with no incident. I chucked my bag in the back and scrambled into the driver's seat; Alice joined me in the front.

"James is coming," she said calmly. "Jasper will ride in the back."

"Okay," I stammered, and fumbled with my seatbelt before starting TT with a grimace. The roar of the engine seemed deafening in the quiet of the night. There wasn't even the sound of nearby traffic to block it out a bit. I hoped Dad was a heavy sleeper, but I doubted it. A neighbor's dog began to bark, and I immediately backed out of the driveway faster than I'd ever anticipated driving in my life, and narrowly avoided clipping the cruiser before making it onto the street.

I gunned it, hurtling out of the neighborhood as fast as TT could go, which was faster than expected. Whatever Jake had done to this engine, it went a lot faster than a seventies Chevy ought to. Alice was silent, her eyes on the mirror on just outside her door, and then she began to speak, rapidly and more neutrally than I had ever heard her before, as if she were reciting lines.

"He saw us leaving, but he's hanging back to see where we go."

"The highway, right?"

"No, we need to switch cars. Once dawn hits your truck will be too noticeable. We're going home to regroup. Victoria is helping him; we can't have both of them tracking the truck. They'll force us off the highway. Turn here," she added, and I immediately turned, TT screeching in response.

"My dad is going to kill me," was all I could say, and I thought I saw her smile grimly.

"I just don't understand," I babbled, "I mean, if I'm Ed's singer, what does James want with me? He could kill anyone in town- not that I want him to- and get away with it."

"It's really our fault," Alice said, her tone distant, her eyes still on the mirror. "He saw our reaction to a simple threat and you became that much more intriguing. A human under the protection of a coven of vampires? Unheard of. Eddie says he thinks like a hunter. Well, think of yourself as a very rare animal. An elephant, maybe. It might be poaching, but that's clearly never stopped him before."

"So James is an asshole who kills elephants," I said with a short laugh that was a tad hysterical, and Alice hummed her agreement.

We were crossing the bridge. "Alice I'm sorry," I suddenly spoke up again, keeping my eyes on the road.

"I was the one who persuaded you to come with us," she said calmly. "I led you into this, like a lamb to the slaughter. You're not the one who should be sorry. Now we just have to kill the would be butcher."

"But if Ed and I had never- well-,"

"Some things," she cut me off quietly, "Are unavoidable. I know that by now."

I was quiet again until we were turning onto that now familiar bumpy dirt road, branches scratching at the windows like fingers in the dark. "How are you going to kill James?"

"We'll probably have to do it more than once," Alice replied sardonically. "He'll come back if he can, even if he has to stitch himself back together. Generally, the best way is to tear a vampire to shreds, and then set them on fire. Usually that seems to work, no matter what. It depends how strong he really is."

I turned onto the Cullen's round drive, and we pulled up in front of the house. All the lights were blazing, like beacons in the pitch blackness.

Alice and Jasper kept me between them as we dashed up to the door, but seemed less tense.

"He won't attack the house," Jasper was saying confidently, "He's not that stupid."

Ed was right beyond the front door, visibly relieved to see me, and I resisted the urge to grab him by the hand again. Esme, Carlisle, Rose, and to my shock, Laurent, were standing near that familiar piano, looking significantly less serene.

"Where's Emmett?" I asked, suddenly growing worried, even though I barely knew him. He was willing to risk his life to protect me, so that had to mean something.

"Keeping guard," Carlisle said calmly, despite the pained look on his face. Esme looked distraught.

I felt a white hot surge of guilt cut through me. This was all because of me.

Carlisle was looking to Laurent. "There is nothing you can do to convince James otherwise?"

He shook his head, regretfully, but I wondered how many regrets he actually held. "James and I are not close. Joining his coven was intended to be temporary, he has- _difficulty_\- keeping members."

"But Victoria's with him?" My voice came out higher than expected.

He looked at me in bemusement. "Of course. He keeps her close; where James goes, she goes."

"You understand that we will do whatever is necessary to keep Bella safe?" Carlisle's tone was that of a terminal prognosis.

Laurent looked between me and the rest of them. "…Of course. I am heading north myself. Tonight. What happens between you and them… I want no part of it."

Jasper muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like 'coward'.

Rose was fuming in a corner, and when I dared glance over at her, she coldly stared back for a moment before looking away. I supposed I actually deserved it right now; Emmett was still out there.

Laurent quietly left the room; I truly hoped this was the last I ever saw of him. He didn't have James or Victoria's intimidation factor, but he didn't sit right with me all the same.

"Can you hear either of them? Or Emmett?" Carlisle was asking Ed.

Esme stepped over to me as he replied, "He's at the river, headed towards the woman. He backed off a bit when he saw Emmett; Emmett's coming back here."

"Alice, Rose, give Bella some of your clothes," Esme was saying. "It will mask her scent."

"No," Rose snapped defiantly, not even looking at me, her eyes on her 'mother'. "I won't participate in this."

"Rosalie," Alice hissed.

"She's been a danger from the start- you think I'll let you sic Emmett on the tracker and the woman like the family guard dog?" she retorted, heart shaped face contorted in ferocious anger. "He won't die for this, and neither will I."

"No one is going to die," Esme said firmly. "We protect our own, Rose. We'd do it for you."

"Well, I'm not exactly the one being hunted, am I?!"

Alice shook her head in disgust and raced out of the room. All too quickly she was back, tossing a black hat and a jacket at me. "The hat's mine. The jacket is Mom's. Give her yours." Esme and I traded jackets while Rose glared.

Carlisle, Ed, and Jasper, now joined by Emmett as well, looking frustrated, turned to us.

"Esme, you and Rose take Bella's truck towards Seattle. Alice and Jasper, you'll take Bella in the Mercedes- the black, it'll blend in better, especially at night. Emmett, Edward and I will go on foot."

"Victoria will follow the truck, almost certainly," Alice said after a moment's pause. "James will seek you three out first, but he might not want to fight, depending on the circumstances. You have to run him down before he turns around and heads south."

"He ran like a dog when he saw me," Emmett scoffed. "Almost lost his cap."

"Then let's go now," Carlisle said, checking his watch. "It's nearly midnight. It will take you," he was looking at me, Alice, and Jasper, "Roughly a day to make it to Arizona. Don't stop driving. We'll call or text with updates- Alice, you have that cell phone?" She nodded.

He exhaled. "Be safe. All of you." I looked away as he and Esme embraced, and Rose and Emmett were still arguing almost silently, but then kissed one another, hard and fast, and broke apart. I looked at Ed.

"I'm sorry," he said, once again.

"Don't be sorry," I said in a rush. "I just- I wish it could have been different."

He took a small step closer to me, and the space between us seemed to go cold. "Edward." I grabbed his hand. "Don't- don't get eaten by anything, okay?"

He nodded, a small smile cracking at the corners of his mouth. "Okay. Try… try not to drown."

"In Arizona?" I snorted, and he let go of my hand, and then he left with his brother and his father.

Esme enveloped me in a shockingly warm hug without a word, and then she and Rose were gone as well.

Alice, Jasper, and I headed to the door. Alice darted out into the night to go get the car, and we were left standing there for a few moments.

"Don't feel guilty," he said after a second or two. "It's not your fault you happened to stumble upon a vampire coven."

"Some luck."

"Luck can be a real bitch, trust me," he drawled, and I shook my head as the car pulled around, headlights blazing. Alice revved the engine, which purred in response like a large jungle cat. She rolled down the window.

"Get in, losers." She smiled devilishly. "We're going on the lam."

_And everything isn't only what it seemed, so hold these words that you never told me; it's time to say goodbye._

_\- Secondhand Serenade, 'Goodbye'_


	20. Chapter 20

_Unfortunately this chapter is short and not very sweet, but it's a necessary quiet interlude before things pick up again next chapter. Hopefully it's enough to tide everyone over. On the plus side, we're down to only five chapters left, which seems insane, I know. Thank you to Capricorn75, SarcasticBimbo, jansails, Vagabonda, snowflakelover, and Shelilah for your reviews, AnneValkyria, DawnsWhimsy, Evangeline the Gothic Angel, KES Harajuku, Rob Smut Lovers, Shelilah, Shylee17, VictoriaVi, chatnoirmd, and dharshicool for your follows, and FrancesaFlores10, KES Harajuku, Rob Smut Lovers, Shelilah, Shylee17, and dharshicool for your faves._

CHAPTER TWENTY

I DIDN'T LET MYSELF CLOSE MY EYES until we sped past the 'Welcome to Oregon' sign. Which meant that for around seven hours, I stared out the window, too tense to let myself nod off. The sun began to rise- or the sky began to lighten, anyways, about an hour before that, as we drove through tiny Raymond. "You should rest," Jasper said, glancing back at me from his seat beside Alice in the front.

I shook my head stubbornly. "I'm fine. You two need to rest- at least Alice should. We can pull over and I can drive for a while."

Alice snorted. "I can go without sleep for much longer than you, Bella."

I held my silence, and didn't relax until we crossed the state border. There was no sign of James, no sign of anyone following us, and no word from any of the other Cullens, either. I tried to take that as a good sign, but I couldn't shake a sinking feeling that things had gone or were about to go very, very wrong.

Alice drove fast, but more controlled than Ed, and I was certain we were speeding whenever we possibly could without attracting the attention of highway patrollers. I could only imagine what my dad was thinking- knowing him, there was probably an Amber Alert out for me already.

When we crossed into Oregon I let myself drift asleep, lulled by the movement of the car, and I _slept_. When I woke up it was late afternoon, and we were in California, on a highway winding through the mountains. The sky was without a single cloud, and I convinced Alice to pull over at the next rest station.

We spent less than fifteen minutes off the road, but I made sure I was driving when we left. Alice, visibly drawn and shaken from driving for over fifteen hours, even with vampiric super-endurance, whatever that really meant, napped restlessly in the backseat. Jasper stayed awake and alert beside me. "I've stayed up for three days straight," he informed me calmly when I suggested he nap as well. "I can manage."

I drove better than I expected, though slower than Alice, wary of the other cars on the road, and knowing my limits, as someone who'd only started driving regularly a few months ago, switched with Jasper roughly three hours later in the outskirts of LA, as the sun sunk below the horizon. With nothing else to do, and feeling significantly calmer, I ate the last of the chips I'd gotten from a vending machine at the rest stop, and fell asleep again.

When I awoke again we were in Arizona; I hadn't been sure I'd ever see it again, but we came out of the mountains and there it was. I was shocked by the flatness of it all after my time in Forks. Had it really been like this? Had it always been this bright? I meant the lights- it was about three in the morning. The streetlights were everywhere- there was no true darkness here, no shadows, I thought, to lurk in. I should have felt that much safer, but I didn't.

"We should stay somewhere close to the airport," Alice spoke up from the backseat, her voice tired but relieved.

"Anywhere off the I-10," I shrugged, rubbing at my eyes. "There's a bunch of shabby little motels."

We took the I-10 around Sky Harbor, and pulled off it and into one of the shabby little motels I'd mentioned. The desk attendant, to my surprise, didn't question our (apparent) ages and lack of adult supervision; they seemed happy enough when Alice pulled out a credit card. We got one room, two beds. It was small, the walls were an unappealing beige, the carpet was worn, and I could not have cared less at the moment.

I laid on one of them, staring at the water stains on the ceiling, as Alice curled up in a faded armchair and flipped through the channels on the small television. I didn't realize I was starving until Jasper ordered room service; I looked over at the two of them in concern, wondering about their entirely different hunger, as I prodded at the pallid chicken with a fork.

"We're fine," Jasper assured me, and I had to take their word for it.

"Thank you," I said finally, after choking down some of my diet soda. "For- for this. I don't-,"

"Don't say another word," Alice said vehemently. "Eddie's our little brother- big brother- he's our _brother _and we'd do anything for him. And he cares about you, so we'd do anything for you. Besides," she added in a lighter tone, "This is the most excitement we've had in a good long while."

"There was the Anchorage incident," Jasper muttered.

"That was ages ago," she rolled her eyes.

We stayed in the room, and did the only thing we could do; we talked. We discussed TV and movies and books and everything we could think of besides our circumstances. I asked Alice and Jasper how they'd met, and they exchanged a look before saying something about a diner and a jukebox and swiftly changing the subject.

We tired of conversation as the early morning became the morning, and Jasper slipped out 'just to have a look around the motel', as I curled up on the bed and tried to trick myself into believing it was evening so I could sleep.

I think Alice went to sleep herself, because I heard her murmuring, and I could only assume she was talking in her sleep. Something about mirrors.

I almost dozed off, but then the cell phone rang. I bolted up in bed, watching Alice lunge for it on the bedside table and breathlessly answer, just as Jasper came back into the room, carefully closing and bolting the door behind him.

I listened in as much as possible, but Alice didn't say much, mostly listening herself. Finally she held it out to me. "It's Ed."

I grabbed it far too quickly, almost dropped it, and answered as calmly as I could, which wasn't very calmly at all. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," he sounded frustrated. "We're all fine. We're in Canada- we lost him. He might have taken a plane; we tired him out trying to corner him. I think he's going back to Forks."

Dad. "Is someone watching my dad?" I blurted out.

"Yes- Mom and Rose followed Victoria west, almost had her at a gas station, but she circled back to Forks, and they beat her there. She's on the outskirts of town, waiting for James, we think."

I tried to reassure myself that she wouldn't do anything rash while she was waiting for her psychotic boyfriend.

"They're keeping an eye on the house and your dad's work, don't worry. We're headed back to Forks ourselves. If James is there we can end this."

"Be careful," I said firmly.

"We will." He sounded like he was about to say something, else but hung up. I handed the phone back to Alice.

Jasper was looking at her. "Have you seen anything else?"

"Mirrors," she said, frowning. "Just- a wall made up of one mirror. And light from something- like a flashlight or a television… But it's too vague. I hate this- I had the most detailed vision last week about the stag I was going to have for dinner." Her small hands were knotted in shaking fists.

"You're doing the best that you can." I tried to sound comforting, and probably failed. She just shook her head, and dodged Jasper's hand when he tried to rub her shoulder. The afternoon passed us by; I was beginning to go stir crazy in this room. I got up and paced, while Alice stared at the TV without really watching anything, and Jasper slept seemingly for the first time. After my tenth round of pacing, she got up.

"We have to get out of here. I know this place has a pool."

I stared at her as if she'd started speaking another language. "I didn't bring anything to _swim_ in." Time at the pool had not been on my mind as I packed, understandably.

She shrugged. "I did."

I continued to stare.

"I figured if we were going south…," she replied slightly defensively, and rummaged through her bag. "Here." She tossed a plain, fairly modest cobalt blue one piece at me, and pulled out a decidedly revealing pure white bikini for herself.

I glanced over at Jasper's sleeping form.

"What he doesn't know won't hurt him," she reasoned, and motioned for me to change. Several minutes later we crept down the hall, me wearing shorts over my bathing suit, her wearing one his shirts, which hung down to her knees. The pool was small, but it was heated, and empty.

The lighting was grimly fluorescent, but neither of us minded. I stripped off the shorts and waded in, letting myself smile for a few precious seconds, and she pulled off the shirt and neatly dived in off the aging board, gliding through the water like she'd been born in it.

We swam around, splashing at each other every so often, and then I sat on the side, kicking my legs mindlessly in the water while Alice floated on her back like Ophelia with a pixie cut.

"I'm scared," I confessed, staring at the bottom of the pool. The silence was only punctuated by the low drone of the filter.

She didn't open her eyes before responding.

"I'm scared all the time. Everything I see, everything that floats through my head, is a potential threat. Something or someone that could hurt me, or Jasper, or anyone I care about."

"How do you deal with it?" I questioned quietly.

This time she opened her eyes, and turned her head slightly to look directly at me. "I remind myself that seeing isn't believing. And I change the channel."

We stayed at the pool for another half hour before returning to the room.

_"As far as I know no one ever got killed... by impatience."_

_\- Elvis Costello, 'Impatience'_


	21. Chapter 21

_Prouder of this chapter than I am of the last. Enjoy James, or at least his voice, everyone. Thank you to SarcasticBimbo, Vagabonda, jansails, snowflakelover, Guest, Capricorn75, nickaroos, and muffinmom for your reviews, Animefiend176, SerenShadow, Theoneandonly Mrs EdwardCullen, jmasencullen, maria2678, salome3, and sueIZide for your follows, and Ivy Robsessed Pattinson, cps4, maria2678, sueIZide, and .73 for your faves. Four chapters left!_

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

THE TRIP TO THE POOL had tired me out, but it had seemed to instill a sort of renewed energy in Alice. She chattered on as we entered the room, noticeably more relaxed, and I carefully avoided Jasper's cold stare, sensing he was less than pleased that we had slipped out without telling him.

Judging by the open defiance radiating off of Alice, I assumed an argument was imminent, and made a big deal of lying down on the other bed, hoping they'd take it outside. They didn't; I assumed they didn't want to leave me in the room alone; and instead slipped into the cramped bathroom. One of them turned on the faucet, and I could barely make out their hushed, vicious voices over the sound of it.

My wet hair bothered me as I tried to listlessly nap, but eventually I did, and when I woke up again things felt strange in the way they only ever do in the very early hours of the day. The clock on my nightstand said it was two in the morning; I was right. I struggled to remember what day of the week it was.

It was Wednesday, I finally realized. March 23rd, 2005. I had been away from Forks for roughly two days. Dad had to be sick with worry, and I couldn't imagine what Mom was thinking. He had to have called her and let her know by now. I could almost hear her ranting; _This isn't like Bella, Charlie, and you know it? Now where could she be? You're sure she said she was going back to Phoenix? _I imagined them arguing over it, and felt even more guilty.

When I looked around the room, I saw Alice frantically scribbling something on one of the little yellowed hotel notepads, Jasper hovering over her. Her head jerked up to spot me, and she silently waved me over. I stumbled over to them, wrapping my arms around myself, and she passed me the notepad. "I saw this sign."

PAOLE WAY

"That's my street," I blurted out. "Here in Phoenix. Where my mom and I lived. 34 Paole Way." I glanced up at her. "You saw it? How did you see it? I mean-,"

"He's there," she murmured. "He's found your old house."

I felt sick, while I tried to reassure myself there was no reason to panic. The house was just that, a house. Neither Mom nor I lived in that condo anymore. But I was panicking. Two days was plenty of time for either Dad or Mom to make it to Phoenix, and if they were looking for me, chances were they'd think I'd gone back to that condo, my childhood home. What if they'd been there when James arrived, waiting for me to show up?

Alice and Jasper were clearly thinking the same thing- Alice was already on the phone, speaking so fast it was as if she wasn't even speaking English. Then she hung up. "Ed, Em, and Dad are flying here from Seattle as soon as they can. Bella, you'll go with them, and Jasper and I will watch the house."

"_What_? No, what if my parents are there?! I can't just leave- we have to go there right now and get them!"

"We don't even know if they're in Phoenix, Bella-," Jasper began soothingly, but I felt anything but soothed.

"I have to call them."

Alice was shaking her head.

"Alice," I hissed. "I have to call them. My mom. Let me call my mom, just to find out where she is and where my dad is."

I held my hand out for the phone. "I will go wherever you want," I promised. "After I call." It was all I could think of. Mom always answered her cell phone, without fail, and I knew her number by heart. She'd made me memorize it before the move. I told myself that I would hang up as soon as I got some clue as to where she and Dad were- Florida, Forks, wherever, anywhere but here.

After a long pause Alice sighed and handed me the phone. I almost dialed wrong the first time, my fingers trembling, but finally it was calling and I walked half a pace away from them, phone to my ear, making for the door. Neither tried to stop me, but they both lingered in the room doorway as I paced in the hall, waiting, praying for her to pick up.

"Come on, come on-,"

It stopped ringing, and I heard someone pick up on the other end. I nearly stopped breathing.

"Mom," I exclaimed in relief, staring at the suspicious stains on the wall. "Mom, it's me, it's Bella."

"Bella, it's so good to hear from you," said a voice that was not at all my mother's, and my knees nearly buckled. This voice was male, youngish, and nauseatingly _normal_\- generic, almost. The sort of voice that could be any number of men you knew; calm but not too calm, measured but light, amused, but cautiously so, not approaching mania or even glee, but the sound of someone who had a feeling everything was going to work out in their favor. Self assured.

James, I immediately knew, was, above all else, an optimist.

"I think you should say something," he advised, not at all threateningly, but like a team mate offering advice on how to outsmart the opponent. "Something safe, you know? 'Mom, I can explain', 'I'm so sorry Mom', 'Mom, stop screaming and just listen'…," he snickered. His laugh sounded younger than how he had looked, when I had seen him.

"Mom," was all I could get out, forcing it past my lips. What I wanted to say, to scream, was 'Mom, where are you, Mom, can you hear me, are you okay, did he hurt you, Mom please be alive please please-'.

"That's good enough for now; we're gonna work through this together, Iz. I like the sound of that. Iz. Izzy. Can I call you that? Yes or no question." He was nearly jovial now; I could almost feel the smugness over the phone. He was steadily getting more with my submission.

"Where are you." It wasn't a question.

"Getting right to the point? I like that. You know, you seem like a straightforward sorta chick, Izzy. Realistic. Not sure why you've waded waist deep into the Cullens's shit, if that's the case, but I can respect those traits." James snickered again, and then seemed to be thinking; I heard him _hmm_ing to himself, considering something. I didn't want to think about what that might be.

"Where are you?!" I snapped, and then froze in terror at what his reaction might be, but his mood only seemed improved by it. No outburst followed, just more friendly advice.

"Try to relax, your guard dogs are probably nervous wrecks. If you don't want to be polite and make conversation, I guess we'll get down to it. From now on, don't say _shit_ unless I tell you to. Act like you're listening. Which you are. You should be, anyways. Class is in session, Iz; do the math: what do you think I'm going to do to your mom if you don't listen to teacher here?" He stretched the words out like a wrapper, waiting in eager anticipation.

I stayed silent, hating myself.

"Good _girl_. We are learning _quickly_ here, aren't we? Tell her to stay where she is."

"Mom," I repeated numbly. "Stay where you are."

"Don't look at your security team, look at something else, or get up and walk away. Say okay." He was slightly shorter now, not any less friendly, but more forward.

"Okay."

"Tell your mom to listen to you. Come on, try to project some emotion here, you sound so _stiff_." He sounded as if he were poking fun at a friend; his teasing was good natured, easygoing. James didn't sound like a mindless hunting machine. He sounded like someone you knew; a classmate, a coworker, a neighbor who stopped by to chat mid jog.

"_Listen to me_," I put as much force into it as possible; I punched at the words, hoped that he at least felt it.

"There we go," he said enthusiastically. "Tell your mom to trust you- actually, tell me to trust you. Because I'm counting on it, Izzy, like you wouldn't believe. Your mom's counting on it too."

"Trust me," I mumbled.

"Oh, noticeable drop in quality there. Alright, I can tell when the fun and games are over. You're pissed. I get it, I do. You're thinking, who is this psycho with my mother's phone? I'm James. Sorry we were never formally introduced. Things got a bit fraught. Here's the thing. You have until… oh, I'd say around noonish, to get to where I am. If you don't I'm going to call you on this phone, and you and your mom can chat and reconnect while I break every bone in her body again and again and _again_. If you don't answer, don't worry, I'll have her leave a voicemail. Agree with me."

I was petrified with fear and under that boiling rage. I couldn't move a muscle; they were all screaming simultaneously.

"Agree with me," James repeated, reasonably, dangerously.

"Yes," I said slowly. "Yes, Mom, just let me talk to you." I suspected he would know what I meant.

"Oh, I see," he made a noise of agreement. "You want proof? Smart. I'll put her on."

I waited, and then-

"Bella!" It was my mom, screaming my name in utter panic. Nothing had ever horrified me so much in my life. My mother was not allowed to sound this frightened, she was never like this... "Bella-,"

She abruptly stopped yelling, and James was back on the line. Hatred rose up in me like a wave.

"Anyways," he continued breezily, as if having shaken off an annoying conversation hijacker. "Back to what I was saying. Ditch the entourage, go to your house, I'll leave a number by the phone. Give it a call. We'll chat some more then. Tell them silly Mom is still in Florida with a delayed flight. Got it?"

"Yes." I tried to keep my voice from shaking.

"Good. Tell her that you'll talk to her soon- don't worry, that's not a lie. We can all talk together, if you do the right thing."

"I'll talk to you soon, Mom." I swore it to her, both over the phone and in my mind. And then James hung up, and I closed the phone and turned to face Alice and Jasper. They were both staring at me in alarm.

"Where are they?" Alice asked impatiently. I looked down at the phone in my hand, and made the only call that made sense.

"He has my mom and he's going to kill her if we don't hurry."

_I'll come back when you call me, no need to say goodbye._

_\- Regina Spektor, 'The Call'_


	22. Chapter 22

_This is a long one. Things come to a head, truths are revealed, names are called. There are three chapters planned after this one. Thank you to jansails, SarcasticBimbo, snowflakelover, Vagabonda, Evangeline the Gothic Angel, ybzib, Shelilah, csp4, Capricorn75, and Emma for your reviews, Momma Laura, Sukiethree, ahsoka1996, kms24, la-geologia, and oneandonlyFanpire for your follows, and FeatheredKids, ahsoka1996, csp4, and siRen454 for your faves. _

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

THE DRIVE TO SCOTTSDALE didn't take very long. Scottsdale was where I'd grown up; technically, it's a separate city entirely from Phoenix, but from our motel it was only a fifteen minute drive. If you're wondering what Scottsdale looks like, just picture a lot of palm trees and a massive mountain looming behind skyscrapers- Camelback Mountain. I'd camped out on it on a school trip freshman year.

It's less impressive than it sounds, but I'd always heard it referred to as 'The West's Most Western Town', so it had that going for it. It's a massive party town; I knew kids from my old high school who would head downtown every weekend, hopping from club to club and hotel to hotel. Right, in spring break season, at this hour, traffic was awful and the streets and sidewalks were packed. We passed the city hall; pure white, aqua fountain pool out front like something out of a sci fi movie.

The condo I'd lived in with Mom was located in a housing development about five minutes from the golf. It was very popular with retirees and rich people with no children. We'd lived in one of the smallest homes. The cab driver hadn't wanted to come all the way out here, but Jasper had essentially thrown money at him until he stopped complaining and just drove.

He'd eyed us nervously in the mirror the entire time, seeing as I probably looked petrified and Jasper and Alice looked murderous. They'd had no choice but allow me to come with them- they wouldn't risk splitting up or leaving me by myself. He abruptly braked to a stop outside the darkened condo, and wordlessly waited for us to get out. I would have scrambled out first, but I'd been wedged between Jasper and Alice, and I nearly ran into Jasper's back trying to get up to the front door as the cab sped off behind us, tires squealing.

"Don't be stupid," he said testily; he was in a terrible mood, and I could understand why. I was beginning to get the feeling that at some point or another, Jasper had been in the military. Something about the way he moved and acted now; it was reminiscent of a soldier dealing with civilians determined to get themselves killed.

"I'll go in first," he continued, tone more neutral now. "When I've searched the house I'll wave you two in after me."

"The key's under the mat," I piped up a little shrilly, and he nodded stiffly, before heading up to the door. Alice kept one small hand on my shoulder as if she expected me to bolt at any moment. I wouldn't have- I was too frightened to move. I kept thinking about how James could be anywhere, not just lurking in the house, watching us. Knowing that I had told them about him.

There was a good chance, I knew, that my mom was already dead. But I couldn't think about it. I couldn't be practical and realistic right now. If Mom was dead that meant my best friend, my whole world for sixteen years, my fucking _childhood_ was gone. Erased. Like tapes recorded over. That was horror. That was an empty void of space, a black hole sucking everything into it. I couldn't lose her. Not like this. Mom was so full of life, and she _enjoyed_ life so much- she wasn't like me, she wasn't negative or pessimistic or brooding- she was supposed to live forever, or at least long enough to see me graduate high school, go to college, get a job, get married, give her grandkids, if only because I felt like I had to… She and Phil had had such a short time together. It couldn't be over already. _I_ had had such a short time with her.

"Bella," Alice murmured to me, breaking me out of my catatonic state for the time being. "The house is safe."

Jasper was back in the now open doorway, looking up and down the street, before waving us in. "There's a number written down in the kitchen." He told me it like a warning, and I felt my knees shake again before I darted into said kitchen. The lights were all on now; Jasper must have gone from room to room, not trusting the dark. I stared at our kitchen whiteboard. Behind the number were faded grocery lists, messages from my mom and I, doodles, evidence of sixteen years of laughter and light and togetherness.

Precise black handwriting was the only thing on it now; it looked almost feminine, not the deranged scrawl you might have expected from someone who was essentially a serial killer. I nearly yanked the phone off the wall, but then Alice said sharply, "Wait."

I stared at her.

"This is too soon for you to have given us the slip," she said calmly, nodding at the clock on the wall. "It's barely three. What's the deadline he gave you?"

I struggled to think, putting the phone down. "Noon."

"We have to wait," Jasper said swiftly. "Until… ten. Wait until ten. Any sooner and he'll be suspicious; he won't think a human could have escaped two vampires so quickly."

"But that's seven hours from now," I said weakly, looking between them. "He- my mom could be dead by then, if she's not- if she's not-," I heaved in a deep breath. No. I wasn't going to break down now. I'd been through too much shit to lose it now.

"We'll bunk down here until then," Jasper went on, coldly, efficiently. That alone cemented it for me that he must have spent some time as a soldier, or at least behaving like one. He was in a different mode now; no longer trying to soothe feelings, ease the tension. He _was_ the tension, and so was Alice, hazel eyes wide and glassy under the bright kitchen lights.

We all slept, well, I slept, downstairs. Jasper and Alice, whether they were tired or not, weren't going to chance an ambush. Alice stayed on the same couch as me, and Jasper, for lack of a better term, patrolled, keeping a careful eye on the front and back door, the windows. I barely slept; I stared at the blank walls and the bare floor and the husk of the place I'd grown up in.

_You're in the belly of the beast_, I thought at one point, hysterically, and almost snickered before getting a hold on myself again.

Mercifully, time seemed to have sped up. It was funny. I'd always remarked on how it literally seemed to slow down when I was around the Cullens, but now it was if it kicked into overdrive, as if the sun couldn't wait to come up. With the air conditioning uninstalled, it was like an oven, even with all the blinds tightly drawn. As ten o'clock drew near, Alice tried calling the others, to no avail.

"No one's picking up," she said, over and over again. Jasper just shook his head. "There's no reason for Mom and Rose not to. The rest of them might still be on the plane, but Mom and Rose should pick up."

I couldn't even worry about Esme and Rosalie. The only thing I thought of was my mom. How frightened she might be. Had James told her? Did she know what he was, beyond some lunatic who'd abducted her? Did she know this was my fault? Where was Phil? And Dad? Had James… had he killed them before taking her, if they'd been with her.

Mom was strong, I struggled to convince myself. I didn't always think of her like that, but she was. She'd been so strong, to leave a marriage she'd felt trapped in, a town she'd been miserable in. She'd raised me by herself. She would have done- would do- anything for me. That wasn't going to change.

I rose slowly and walked into the kitchen, Alice shadowing my every move. Jasper was leaning against the counter, staring at the phone. "Call the number now," he said emotionlessly.

I nodded, and dialed.

Now that I knew what he sounded like, I dreaded hearing him pick up. He did, on the third ring, just when I was starting to panic. I was half convinced it was on purpose.

"Izzy." He sounded delighted. "I knew you could do it."

"What now," I whispered, and hated myself for not being able to go any louder than that.

"I found a good place for us to meet up; it'll bring back some fond childhood memories for you, I'm sure. Your mom told me you used to come here all the time."

I couldn't breathe. I was convinced I could not breathe.

"Do you still dance, Iz?"

The ballet studio. The mirror wall.

"No," I said more firmly. "I don't."

He hummed again. "That's too bad. Two left feet, is that it? Well, you can still _walk_. Why don't you come over to the studio now, huh? Shouldn't take you too long. Your mom and I can't wait to see you."

"Fuck you." It dripped out of my mouth like spit, or blood. I was too- I didn't know what, this wasn't anger, this was _wrath_\- to care about his possible reaction. It was like I had blinders on. All I could see was my mom, and him, and that mirror wall. And I wanted to kill him.

James sounded surprised; I heard him draw in a breath, mockingly or not. "I can tell you're impatient. _Me too_. Better hurry up." Then I heard the dial tone.

I hung up, hands shaking. "He'll kill her, he'll kill her," I was babbling, I realized. "I made him angry, he's going to kill her-,"

Alice was on the phone, calling another cab.

"He won't," Jasper said, and I knew it wasn't intended to be comforting. "And if he has hurt her, either way, it will be nothing compared to what we do to him." It didn't sound like an angry threat. He sounded completely matter of fact. _That_ comforted me.

I peeked out the window. It was, to my shock, overcast, despite the intense heat.

The cab pulled up out front in less than ten minutes. The dance studio was only a few blocks away, and it was smaller than I had remembered it, shrunken, and decidedly abandoned, the front windows boarded up. The driver didn't ask what our intentions were, and didn't stick around to find out. We stood in the parking lot, under the meager shade of a shriveled palm tree, and exchanged looks.

"We can't all go in," I finally said. "I have to go in alone, and you two can go in around back."

"In the time it takes us to get around the back he could kill you," Alice hissed. "No. I'll go in with you."

"If he _sees_ you he'll kill my mom."

"I can get to him first. Distract him, while you get your mom out. Jasper can come in through the back and we'll take care of him."

Jasper pulled something out of his backpack. "Found this in your cellar."

I looked at the lighter fluid, then back at him. "You plan to…"

"We'll have to burn him after we kill him. The whole place." Again, the matter of factness.

I glanced over at the studio. "We're wasting time. Alice, come on." There was no time left. It had to be now. Jasper raced off around the side of the building. The street, thankfully, was empty.

The door was unlocked. Alice nodded, and I opened it. We stepped into the darkened lobby. There were two cracked plastic chairs in a corner, a cleared out counter. A toppled over potted plant. The studio had had two rooms, one for the younger dancers, one for the older dancers. Both were dark, but then I heard it. Someone talking in one of them. Alice had heard it before me, and now, finger pressed to her lips, crept towards it. I followed.

Then I heard my mother scream, and she broke down the door, literally broke it, completely off its hinges, and launched herself into the room. I nearly flew into the room myself after her, faster than I'd ever sprinted before. I didn't even trip over the door.

Both of us stared at the boxy old television on the portable rolling stand, positioned in the exact center of the room. I knew that television. The dance instructor had once showed us a performance of Swan Lake on it, all of us huddled on the floor, watching. And I knew the video playing on it. I saw myself surface from the pool. I was seven; it was my birthday, my last birthday party before I'd insisted on giving up on them.

We were at the community pool, and I'd slipped on a wet patch and fallen into the deep end, scraping up my knees and elbows and I did so. Mom had been filming it; she'd loved making home videos. She must have left some of the tapes at the condo, by accident, in the chaos of packing for the move. On the video, her disembodied voice shrieked my name in panic before I surfaced, climbing out of the pool, crying but mostly unharmed, and the camera went black as she dropped it.

My mom wasn't here, I knew now. She'd never been here. I felt a rush of relief before the TV switched off.

"You came," he said, behind us. "I can't believe you actually came. It worked." It was James. He was staring not at me but Alice, and looked as though he wanted to cry tears of joy.

"Mary," he breathed. "Oh Miss Mary Alice, remember me?"

James up close was not much different from James from a distance. Tall, dirty blond, hat gone, same worn, loose clothes. Generic. He looked like he sounded, and he sounded like he looked. His words didn't match up with his casual tone, as if he were discussing the game last night.

"Who are you," Alice said, voice higher than I'd ever heard it, almost warbling. "How do you- that's my-,"

"That's your name," he said encouragingly. "Yes. Now you're remembering. I knew you would. I'm sorry it had to be like this. But I had to divide to conquer. That's how you bring down a group of anything- animals, humans, vampires. First you go after the weakest link, and the whole herd splits apart."

He cast a look in my direction. "Don't look at me like that. You were still important, just not as much as you thought, Iz. I had to go after you first. It was the only way. But I never cared about _you_." He snorted. "Why would I? Your blood doesn't sing to _me_\- if I wanted to hunt down a poor, helpless, little human girl I'd just pick one off the street."

"I don't understand," Alice spoke up, voice still so high. "I've never met you before. You don't know me."

"I did," he snapped, almost defensively. "I did, oh yes I did. I _saw_ you _before_, before you'd even met your little toy soldier," he sneered. "Before you were one of us. And you were _mine_."

She was staring at him as if transfixed.

"Memories dull and fade after transformation," he continued. "Maybe to make it easier on the mind. But you- you blanked out completely, didn't you? You have no idea where you came from. You could never see that. Victoria told me all about your family; I had her do her research. Mary Alice who can see the future but not the past. Not _her_ past." He laughed. "_I'm_ your past. You see me now, don't you?"

She was silent. He took a step closer. "You see me now."

There was suddenly a commotion nearby. It sounded like wild animals fighting, just a room away.

"Jasper," Alice said suddenly, and halfway through it turned into a scream. "JASPER!"

James caught her by the shoulders. "Don't worry, Victoria is dealing with him; he's her treat after all her hard work for me. She hasn't had a good fight in a while, so I told her to enjoy it. I hear he used to be a solider. In the war in the South."

She pushed him, harder than a teenage girl of her size should have been able to, and he stumbled back.

"You can't stop some things, Mary," he snarled, offended. "We were meant to be together. I was meant to have you but that _fucking_ bastard got you first. I didn't even _want_ to turn you. I just wanted you as you were. You were perfect. You were going to be mine- Victoria is my mate but you were the _one_. You were nature's _gift_ to me. You were trapped in that hellhole and I would have saved you from it-," his casual tone was slowly warping, mutating into something else. He only had eyes for her, and she only had eyes for him, but in distinctly different ways.

It was Alice's turn to snarl. I saw those rows of teeth again, but they were far from the most horrifying thing here. She rocked one step back.

"Don't do this," James spat at her, pleadingly, furiously. "I don't want to hurt you, but I will if you keep acting like this. I'll kill the human bitch, I'll kill them all for you."

I backed up, towards the TV on the stand. He wasn't paying attention to anything but her.

Alice growled low and deep in her throat. I moved behind the stand.

"Mary," James said warningly, like a parent reprimanding a child about to throw a tantrum. The noises from the other room only got louder; there was the sound of glass shattering.

I gripped the stand with both hands and charged forward, slamming it into James just as Alice lunged. Then things went upside down; I was on the floor, and the TV landed beside me with a deafening crash, sparking as it did so. James was roaring, in what had to be both pain and rage, and something clamped around my one leg like iron and _pulled_, lifting me off the ground entirely.

I hit the mirror covered wall, and felt it fracture under my impact. Glass shards rained down on me as I slid to the floor. I didn't feel pain. I didn't feel anything. I saw the glow of the emergency light at the back door of the room, and I saw blood creeping across the floor, moving towards me. My leg was at an entirely different angle than it was supposed to be. I could feel warm, sticky wetness in my hair, trickling down my neck.

Someone was screaming- who it was, I didn't know. It could have been me. I felt the floor shudder underneath me.

"MARY!"

It was getting hard to stay awake, I realized slowly. My eyes were starting to drift shut. I couldn't move, never mind sit up. There was a dark shape just a few feet in front of me. It was Alice, on her hands and knees on the floor, struggling to her feet.

"That's not my name," she screeched, and my eyes slipped closed. The sounds grew fainter, except for the screams. Those I still heard, until there was nothing at all.

_Hide and seek, trains and sewing machines, oh, you won't catch me around here._

_\- Imogen Heap, 'Hide And Seek'_


	23. Chapter 23

_This chapter is so extraordinarily short it could have easily been combined with the next chapter, which probably would have thrilled a lot of people, but I felt it would have killed some of the dramatic effect. I may just be riding the high of my last cliffhanger; obviously, this one won't be as effective, but I felt that it was necessary to tie up/off a plot thread or two. That said, I feel a bit bad, so I'm going to do my usual thanks up here, and then try to address some questions that have been brought up in reviews/explain some choices that have steered this story more and more into AU territory. I would suggest reading this chapter, then scrolling back up. Thank you to Vagabonda, snowflakelover, SarcasticBimbo, nickaroos, jansails, Capricorn75, Evangeline the Gothic Angel, muffinmom, Emma, Shamatt0403, corkykellems, xyzCullenfan, csp4, and Shelilah for your reviews, Loveforgreeneyes, XxTwilight CrystalxX, gaara king of the sand,and kms24 for your follows, and LdyPhantom, corkykellems, and csp4 for your faves._

_QUESTION TIME (yeah so not all of these were actual questions but whatever let's get into it)_

_Toy Truck (Bella's car) - Bella actually refers to her truck as 'Toy Truck' at least once in the original Twilight. My Bella simply likes the nickname a whole lot more, and uses it more often. In the original book Charlie tells Bella that he believes Billy bought the truck 'used' in 1984. I took this to mean the truck is a circa 1970s American Chevrolet pickup. Possibly the 1972 model. I tried to do my research. Any older seemed unrealistic for a teenager to be driving in 2005 to me._

_Bella's Parents - Renee and Charlie are borderline neglectful, typical Young Adult novel absentee parents in the original series. They barely seem to notice their daughter's existence, aside from the fact that she has a mysterious boyfriend. I've tried to remedy this and make them feel more human- they are adults with their own lives, but they love Bella very much, and while they certainly trust her a lot more than most parents trust their teenage children, she is still a child, and they're aware of this. They are also amicably divorced, something I really wanted to get across, and while they have very different parenting styles, I wanted to show that Bella loves and respects both of them equally, although she is particularly close to her mother, understandably._

_Bella's Personality - There's a massive amount of debate in this fandom over Bella's personality, and whether she is a positive or negative character, especially in the first book of the series. My Bella is, to be perfectly blunt, a bitch. She's smart, practical, and very reserved, but she is not a pleasant person, especially when this story begins. I've tried to show her develop and grow at least a little over the course of Other Men. This is part one of my series, and it takes place over the span of just a few months, so she's not going to do a 180 right off the bat. That said, I don't blame anyone who dislikes her, feels she was better in the original books, etc. A lot of people have said she comes off as more likable, and whether you like old Bells or not, I hope you can at least relate to her as the narrator, which was my main goal._

_The Cullens - My Cullens are teenagers. That's basically the core of it. They may be immortal, but they are permanently trapped in one phase of their life, aside from Carlisle and Esme, who are obviously adults. My brand of vampires eat, sleep, and breathe. What don't they do? They don't die, and blood is their main source of sustenance. They've also got some pretty terrifying teeth, but they are not astoundingly gorgeous, nor deathly pale, nor do they have red eyes, aside from when they are actively feeding on blood. Their 'special' abilities are basically the same as in the original books, with some tweaks here and there. Most of all I wanted the Cullens to be a family, and act like a real family._

_Edward - I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say this fandom worships Ed. Is my Ed idolization-worthy? Probably not. He's a seventeen year old boy with a lot of issues, and I've tried not to shy away from them. He varies between trying to act like the adult he feels that he is, and acting like the teenage boy he actually is. His feelings for Bella are extremely complex, although they could probably be more simply resolved if he built up the self-assurance to confess some things to her. I call him 'Ed' because it's quicker to type out than Edward, and nicknames such as Ed, Eddie, Ned, and even Teddy have all been commonly used as a shortening of the admittedly somewhat regal name 'Edward' for hundreds and hundreds of years. I also feel that a nickname humanizes him, although it may uncomfortably remind some of his age and maturity level. But I'm pretty fond of Ed, and I hope others are too. He tries his best._

_Jessica and Mike - The original series Jessica and Mike are shallow, petty teenagers there to make Bella look smart. My Jessica and Mike (and the rest of Bella's friends) are also shallow, petty teenagers, but they are also kids learning to grow up, and they genuinely like Bella. We've all known a lot of popular people, and not all of them have to be horrible. That said, I enjoy Jess and Mike's fairly harmless brand of peer pressure._

_The Chemistry (or lack of) - Man, I probably shouldn't have tagged this as romance, but you know what, I might surprise you all some day. Do Ed and Bella have chemistry in this? ...I dunno. They seem to be trying to grow a friendship first, and I can't say I blame them. That said, if anyone has ragequit reading this after realizing no one seemed to be doing much kissing except Jessike, I don't blame you. Been there._

_Jacob - Jake's fifteen, enjoys cars, and is probably off somewhere playing video games right now. Who knows, maybe we'll see more of him in the future. HINT. HINT._

_Copyright Infringement - Did I read the original book while writing this? Yep. Did I scour the wiki for information? Yep. Have I researched literally everything (travel times, dates, music that would have been on the radio in February/March 2005) that I could think of? Oh, definitely. Have I copied any of this directly from the book? Aside from the *fictional* website info about vampires, not to my knowledge, no. Do I think Stephanie Meyer might sue? I don't think I'm very high up on her list. Besides the fact that I don't make money from this, nor would I ever want to. I consider this a writing exercise, and something that I do for fun once a week. First rule of being a writer: write for yourself, guys. Don't worry about anyone else. Don't worry about if it's crap. You can edit. You can do whatever the hell you want. I'm pretty young, and I don't write that well. I try not to take myself (or anyone else, for that matter) too seriously._

_Port Angeles - Sexual assault, attempted or otherwise, should be taken seriously. I try not to make light of it in my writing, or imply in any way shape or form that a character (or anyone, for that matter) could ever bring something like that upon themselves. You are only responsible for your own actions. I tried to have Bella respond to it in a way that made sense for her as a character. Trust me, she hasn't just forgotten it by now. That's not something that just goes away and you never think about it again. If anyone reading this needs help or has questions, PLEASE go to loveisrespectdotorg.  
_

_Bella and Edward - Bella and Ed start off making each other extremely uncomfortable. Do many healthy relationships begin this way? Probably not, but they're doing their best to adapt to one another and make the best of an awkward-is-an-understatement situation._

_Music Quotes - The music quotes at the end of each chapter reference the chapter's original title. My small homage to the original Twilight, since I'm essentially bastardizing it here. Music IN the chapters are top hits from 2005, which make me laugh, because music from 2005 is hilarious._

_James - James is the type of person who was a sick, twisted individual in mortal life, and making him really hard to kill and basically giving him tracking superpowers didn't make him much better. He's the type of person who likes to be in control of others at all times, and people escaping that control make him very, very mad. Victoria is so deep in the throes of Stockholm Syndrome, besides a multitude of other mental problems, that she believes they're a people-eating Bonnie &amp; Clyde duo. James is obsessed with an idea of Alice as something he could keep as a little pet in a gilded cage, as when he knew her she was abused, neglected, and very, very ill. The current Alice has other ideas. And fangs._

_My Writing/Readers - I plan on going back and doing some editing once this is completed. It will never be up to my own perfectionist standards. I'm sure there's plenty of mistakes, and I welcome any constructive criticism you guys have. This story is long, some parts are more dull than others, and it's probably pretty frustrating to wait for updates. BUT if not for you all I never would have gotten this far. I'm weak and human and part of me thrives on praise and feedback. Now I don't just want to write this for me, I want to write it for you, though I don't expect you to agree with every change I make or plot twist I take. But you guys who review, whether it's to tell me that this is amazing or to tell me that it's kind of shit? You're really cool. You guys who follow and fave this and recommend it to other people? You're really cool. You guys who read it every time it updates? You're really cool. ANYONE who's EVER read this, whether they started laughing and had to close the tab, or whether they check in every few months? You're really cool. I never asked for any of this, but I got it. And THAT'S pretty unbelievable, if you ask me. So here's to you guys._

_I've got two chapters left and no idea how I'm gonna write them, and if you stick with me to the end, I'll try not to disappoint._

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

EVERYTHING HURT when I woke up. I immediately started to panic, but in a contained sort of way, as if I was inside my own head pounding at the walls. I still couldn't really move, but I could twitch one of my hands; I found myself squinting at it. It was dark red.

My head felt plastered to the floor; I could feel glass underneath it shifting slightly every time I tried to move my head to get a better view of my surroundings. I thought I saw shapes, in the darkness, and I could smell the room rapidly filling up with smoke, although I saw no fire. I tried again to move. I had to find Alice and Jasper. We had to get out.

But I couldn't do much more than shift slightly on the floor, and even that made me gasp in pain. My one leg was in agony every time I tried to move it. My breath was coming in fast and strained, and it hurt every time I inhaled. At least one of my ribs had to be broken. My head was throbbing, the pressure so intense I was sure I was about to black out again. My ears were ringing like alarm bells, and I felt the overwhelming urge to vomit. I tried to roll over onto my back; I was lying on my side.

When I did so I whimpered in pain; I couldn't help it. And then I heard someone scream my name.

"Bella!"

It was Edward; I was sure of it. "I'm right here," I tried to say, but it came out a slurred mumble.

"Bella, where are you?!"

I heard the sound of someone shoving something large and heavy, and close to me, aside.

"She's here, she was behind the stand," someone else said urgently. "She doesn't look good- Jesus, is this all her blood?" Now the voice sounded considerably more strained.

"Get away from her, then, Emmett," yet another voice called, a bit further off. There was a low crackle nearby; I was starting to recognize it as the sound of flames.

I heard Emmett back up, glass crunching under his shoes. He seemed to slip in what had to be blood, and cursed before righting himself.

Then someone was right next to me. "Bella," Ed said; he sounded- I couldn't concentrate enough to tell you what he sounded like. But he was there. I couldn't really make him out, but he was there. I felt him, in the dark, right beside me. Hadn't I dreamed about this once? I couldn't remember.

"Bella, can you look at me? Can you see who I am?"

I stared blankly in the direction I thought he had to be in. Everything was blurred. He was blurred, as if someone had tried to erase him. It made me uneasy. Who would do that? Why were his edges distorted?

"Bella, just let me know you can hear me!"

Edward- the boy- no, his name was Edward- Ed- sounded very sad and very young, I thought dully, hearing everything grow fainter once again. I felt badly for him. He seemed to be panicking.

"I see you," I breathed, although I did not see him at all. "I…"

I couldn't breathe. I was suffocating, as if there was a pillow over my face. I tried to sit up, to get more air, but my head slumped back down onto its wet, jagged pillow.

"Where are you," I tried to say, but nothing came out. The room, the dark place, smelled like a barbecue, I thought. It reminded me of summer. The pool. I was in the pool, and I was slipping down to the bottom, where no one could see me. I didn't want them to.

_I sit and wait; does an angel contemplate my fate?_

_\- Robbie Williams, 'Angels'_


	24. Chapter 24

_There will only be one more update after this, the epilogue, and then this story is completed. (This part, anyways.) Thank you to SarcasticBimbo, snowflakelover, jansails, muffinmom, Capricorn75, and nickaroos for your reviews, MissyDy, bombarolo, and daya01star for your follows, and bombarolo and csp for your faves. _

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

I WOKE UP IN THE LIGHT. It seemed that way; when I opened my eyes it hurt, badly, and I immediately shut them, blocking out the bright white light before slowly opening them again, wincing. It took me a few moments to even see properly, and what I saw was a white, clean room. There was a window next to me, but the blinds were drawn, and it was impossible to tell whether it was day or night. I was lying in an unfamiliar bed, pillows carefully arranged behind me.

There was something _in_ my hand, I could feel it. I looked down and immediately felt nauseous, staring at the IV embedded there. I looked away, following the tubing up into the yellowish drip stationed beside the bed. It was finally beginning to occur to me that I was in a hospital; my leg was propped up, locked into place by something, and my head was bandaged, and I thought I could feel more bandages around my chest, under the paper hospital gown.

It was difficult to think straight. Clearly, I was alive, and, if not well, not horrifically maimed or scarred… as far as I could tell. But… but how had I _gotten_ here? _Where_ was here? The uncertainty of having no idea sent fear flooding back over me, but I tried to stay calm. If I focused, I could hear voices just outside what had to be the door. Soon enough, someone would realize I was awake.

The last thing I remembered was being in a pool. Had I been to a pool? I could still smell the chlorine in my nostrils. No, that wasn't right. It hadn't been chlorine, it'd been different. …Gasoline? A gas station? In a car? I remembered broken glass underneath me. Had I been in a car crash? That would explain my injuries, but-

No. No, there was a boy, and he was crying, and I'd wanted him to stop. I'd just wanted to sleep. Why had he been crying?

_Bella, just let me know you can hear me!_

I nearly fell out of the bed. I remembered. I remembered all of it. I kicked at the bedcovers drawn neatly over me with my one good leg, and started to pick at the tape attaching the IV. I had to- I had to find Ed, I had to find all of them, I had to make sure they were alright. What about _him_? What if James was still out there? My panic increased, and at that moment the voices outside grew louder before the door burst open.

My parents rushed in.

I froze like a deer caught in the headlights. So did they.

"Bells," my dad choked out, at the same time my mother gasped, "Bella!"

They both were on me in an instant, crushing me in a joint embrace.

"Ribs," I whimpered, and they eased up, Dad backing off, red faced.

Mom knew no such shame, gripping my hand so tightly it felt like it was about to break off.

I wanted to be annoyed with both of them, but I was so overwhelmingly relieved to see them safe all I could do was start to cry.

"I'm sorry," I got out in between mortifying sniffles, and Dad beat a hasty retreat, muttering something about giving me time to adjust and coming back later.

Mom remained. To be perfectly honest, she looked like a mess. My mother had never been this poised, perfectly coiffed beauty queen, but her brown hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail, and her face was free of makeup, her clothes wrinkled. She looked even younger than her thirty five. I was reminded of something; a picture somewhere.

She also looked livid.

"Isabella Marie Swan," she hissed. "Don't you dare start crying on me, young lady. Do you have any idea what you put us through, running off in the middle of the night like that?! Why didn't you call?! Where the hell did you think you were going?! Trying to drive all the way back down here! By yourself! In that beat up old truck! You're lucky you weren't _killed_ in the accident!"

"The accident?" I repeated dumbly.

She stared, and then paled. "You don't remember?! Bella, oh my God! Who am I? How old are you? When were you born? What year is it?!"

"Mom-,"

"Answer me!"

"You're my mom, Renée Dwyer, formerly Renée Swan," I said tiredly, still wondering what 'accident' she was talking about. "I'm sixteen; my birthday is September 13th, 1988. It's 2005. March."

"Oh, thank God," she sighed in relief.

Despite everything, I still felt tempted to roll my eyes.

"I just don't… I don't really remember my accident…," I said slowly, trying to coax the information out of her.

"Well, the Cullens found you in your truck on the side of the road! It looked like someone side swiped you and you ran into a pole! You're lucky you're not dead or paralyzed!" was the ranting answer I received.

So that was the story we were going with, then. A car accident; I suppose it made sense, given my injuries. They could hardly inform the doctors and my parents that I'd been thrown into a _wall_. I hoped the fact that they'd taken me to the hospital meant that they were alright.

"Are they here?" I asked immediately.

Mom looked taken aback by the obvious concern in my voice. "Dr. Cullen and his son, your _boyfriend_, your dad tells me, are. The rest of them left last night." Only my mother would sound more betrayed about me not having told her I had a 'boyfriend' than about me 'running away'.

I stayed silent, trying to think of how to excuse my actions, or at least rationalize them, to her.

"Bella," she sighed for what seemed like the millionth time. "I told you that you could come stay with us anytime, if you didn't like it there. I thought you were adjusting!"

"I did," I insisted meekly. "I just… I wasn't thinking straight, Mom. I don't know what it was. I got into a fight with- with my boyfriend, and I just wanted to go."

She stared at me. "What kind of fight?"

"I don't know; I don't even remember it. It was stupid. I overreacted."

"You of all people," she snorted, "Calm, composed Bella, overreacting?" Then she was quiet, before squeezing my hand again. It was going to go numb, I was sure of it.

"You scared the crap out of your dad and me," she said more quietly. "Bella, you're our baby girl. You can't do these sorts of things. You're too smart and you're too strong. We could have lost you."

"I'm sorry." I did mean it, just not the way she probably thought I did.

For the next twenty or so minutes it was just more scolding, punctuated by brief intervals of hugging and/or crying, until finally Mom sat down on the edge of my bed and regarded me solemnly. "I have two things I need to tell you."

I braced myself.

"Phil got signed," she said carefully, but I could see the happiness in her eyes. "To the Stockton Ports. They're in northern California, about an hour away from where your Nana used to live in Sacramento. I'm going to try to get a job with the school district."

Mom had never gone off to college straight out of high school, but had gotten a two year degree from a local community college in Phoenix a few years back, in the hops of it boosting employment opportunities.

"That's great, Mom," I said honestly.

"It's about thirteen hours away from Forks, but it's a short flight," she said nervously. "And I thought… this way we'd be seeing you a lot more often. Every few months, maybe. _If _you still want to stay in Forks, with your dad."

I had a choice, I realized suddenly. I _could_ leave, and move in with Mom and Phil again. It would mean starting at yet another new high school for my senior year, but… Had I heard about this just a few months ago, in January, when I'd been packing my things, I would have been thrilled. California wasn't Arizona, but it was close, and it definitely wasn't Washington. There would be wide open spaces and plenty of sun.

I should be jumping at the chance to leave. Forks had almost gotten me killed. Multiple times. Rather, the denizens of Forks had almost gotten me killed. Multiple times. Both the living and the dead. Forks had been my prison, my own personal hell, the very definition of 'teenage limbo'. But it _hadn't_. That was the problem. At some point, I'd started to look into the trees and not see the same things I'd used to see. Intrigue, rather than suspicion. Possibilities, rather than fear.

Great, I'd been Stockholm syndromed by a town. But I was done trying to hide the way I felt about things.

"I'm not leaving Forks," I said firmly. "I know I- it sounds weird but I think I sort of fit in there. It's starting to be sort of like…," I trailed off, unwilling to say it.

Mom saw it in my eyes, a perfect reflection of her own.

"Home is where the people you love are," she said. "And I know you love your dad." She narrowed her gaze slightly at me, and while it wasn't exactly terrifying, I got the message. "I'm not sure if he knows that you love him, after the way you've behaved…"

"I'll talk to him later," I mumbled, feeling my face heat up. "What was the second thing?"

She looked shocked for a moment, and then exhaled carefully.

I braced myself again.

"Bella, I'm pregnant."

I looked at her, searching her face for signs that she was joking.

"_What_?"

"I just entered my second trimester last week," she admitted almost shamefacedly, as if I were the parent and she the impending teenage mother.

"What- when-," I struggled to do the mental math in my head. If she had just hit three months last week then that meant the baby had been conceived- just before her and Phil's wedding.

Oh, God.

"It wasn't planned," she was quick to reassure me, "But Phil has always wanted kids, and-,"

"I will be _seventeen_ by the time the baby's born, Mom!"

We might even end up with the same birthday.

"But think of how fun it will be to be a big sister-,"

"You have no idea what it's like to be a sister, you're an only child, just like Dad- does Dad know?!" I demanded to know, horrified.

"Not yet, and don't you breathe a word of it to him," she said fiercely. "You can let him know in another month or so."

This kid wouldn't even have the same father as me. We'd be half siblings. I slowly tried to grasp the idea of it internally. Mom and Phil were having a kid. My little brother or sister. I didn't hate the idea of being an older sister, not really, but I had no experience with children, or, even worse, infants. I couldn't even think about this right now. I slumped back down onto the pillows, closing my eyes.

"Well…," Now Mom sounded guilty. "I'll let you be for now and come back later with your dad. Try to get some rest."

She slipped out of the room while I tried to catch up with my thoughts. Mom and Phil were moving to California and having a baby, I had to talk to Dad, I had no idea what day it was, and I was probably missing a lot of homework right now.

I dozed for a little bit, but then grew more alert as I heard the door open again. I expected to see my parents, but the figure that stood at the end of my bed was neither of them.

"Hi," I said hoarsely, looking at Edward.

He looked back at me. "Hi."

He wasn't crying; his eyes looked dry, although the dark circles underneath them were especially prominent, and his rust red hair was sticking every which way.

"You're okay," I sniffed, and mortified, wiped at my nose with my free hand.

"Me?" He snorted. "I wasn't the one who strolled into an abandoned vampire infested building."

"I wasn't the one who- tell me you didn't fight James," I whisper hissed.

He shook his head. "He was half dead by the time we got there, actually. Victoria abandoned him; Jasper influenced her paranoia, and her talent seems to be an uncanny ability for saving her own skin. With her gone he jumped in to help Alice. James never stuck me as someone used to a fair fight."

"So he _is_ dead?" I had never imagined myself asking that, never mind so eagerly, but here we were.

"Yes. He's gone. As is your old dance studio. Sorry about that." Ed didn't look terribly guilty.

"Don't worry about it. I'm more concerned about my truck. I heard it… ran into a pole."

He shrugged. "Well, it ran into a Victoria, and the damage isn't as bad as it sounds. Maybe you'll get it back."

I groaned quietly, and then struggled into a more upright position. We eyed each other for a few tense moments, and then he sat down on the edge of the bed, and I gingerly wrapped my arm around and, feeling bold, laid my head against his shoulder.

"I thought you were dead, when I first saw you lying there," he told me in a voice barely above a whisper. "And I've seen a lot of death but that… I felt like I was a kid again, looking at my parents in their hospital beds."

"I had to. He said he had my mom."

"I know. But it would have been so easy for him to end it right then and there."

I shrugged. "It turns out he was more concerned about Alice. ...How is she?"

I felt him stiffen. "A bit fragile, right now. It's only Friday night."

"I was out for that long?!"

It was his turn to shrug. "More or less. Dad says they'll probably let you out by Sunday."

We were silent again, lost in our thoughts.

"You should have told your mom you wanted to go to California with her," he broke it after a while, shifting to look at me, seriously.

I looked just as seriously back at him. "I know what I want, and it's not that. …Not anymore."

He shook his head. "You could have died, Bella. You know… you know all the risks by now. We don't have to pretend anymore, we can't keep testing fate-,"

"That sounds like bullshit, if you ask me," I interjected coolly. "I don't think… fate has nothing to do with it. It's a bunch of random chances, and so far… look, I realized something while I was on the run from a homicidal hobo and his girlfriend."

Ed tried and failed not to smirk just a little. "And what would that be?"

"That _this_ is different. And _you're_ different. And nothing- not even your family- nothing _really_ lasts forever. And I don't want to spend my life wasting the chances I get. I don't care if it makes me a romantic, or a moron, or a moronic romantic, but-,"

"Can I ask you something?" he interrupted me.

"Yes," I conceded grudgingly.

"Can I kiss you?"

"Yes," I said before I knew I had said it, and he tasted like mineral water and hospital food, and I probably tasted like saline and death warmed over, but neither of us cared, and the bed sheets my IV-hand was scrunched up in were scratchy, and the air conditioning was humming noisily in the background, and when we pulled away from each other none of it mattered. None of it fucking mattered at all.

_I'm looking for a dead end song; you wish that smoke could change its color..._

_\- The Format, 'Dead End'_


	25. Chapter 25

_So that's all, folks. One year, twenty five chapters later, I finally finish a story that's not even fully mine. At the time of writing this final Author's Note, Other Men has 172 reviews, 202 followers, 104 favorites, and 16,454 views. I know there are fanfictions on here that blow that out of the water, but to me, that's crazy. This ha definitely been a... ride, I'll say that. As usual, I want to thank jansails, Guest, Capricorn75, SarcasticBimbo, snowflakelover, PandaGirl01, Vagabonda, MusetteBlanchard, Guest, and nickaroos for the reviews, __PJOAAR5TMIHPDIA4599, Honiahaka02, Ashburk712, and CheckAlexa for the follows, and ginkgo00 and csp4 for the faves. I will be posting a sequel hopefully by the beginning of July, so I'd advise anyone who wants to know when that's out to follow or favorite me as an author so you know when. I will warn everyone that things will get more AU (Alternate Universe) from here on out, so if you're expecting a carbon copy of New Moon... don't. Thank you all so much._

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

THIS WAS RIDICULOUS. There'd been a reason, I kept insisting to everyone who would listen, why I hadn't wanted to go to the spring dance. Well, several reasons. One: I couldn't dance without looking like a robot having a seizure. Two: I didn't like the music they played at dances. Three: It was being held in the gym. Four: It wasn't as if I was going with anyone.

I was down one reason now, but the rest ought to have still applied, especially since I'd been wearing a cast on my leg since the end of March, and it was now the beginning of May. I wasn't getting the stupid thing off until almost July. I couldn't _drive_ until then, and if I had been clumsy before… oh boy.

I would have thought the cast, the crutches, and the physical therapy would have been bad enough, but after I'd apologized to Dad and we both pretended that we hadn't started to cry, the swift hand of justice had come down on me. My curfew was six o'clock until summer vacation started. I was only allowed to see Edward outside of school on the weekends, even though I had explained to Dad countless times that it wasn't his fault I'd been in 'the accident'.

His response? 'You're right, it's not his fault, it's your fault, which is why you're being punished.' I couldn't even count on Mom to talk him down; she and Phil were busy moving into their new home in Stockton, and with preparing for the baby, which was, of course, due on my seventeenth birthday. Next week they were going for an ultrasound to find out the gender.

I was oh so thrilled.

Upon my return to school, I'd expected to be heralded as a celebrity… again. But, shockingly enough, the news of my accident had been kept fairly hush-hush, and aside from some odd looks and the usual Jess interrogation, things had been… pretty normal. I'd been going to classes, stressing about the SAT, and… dating my boyfriend.

I still wasn't used to referring to Ed as my boyfriend, even if we'd technically been 'dating' for even longer than what we actually saw as the start of our relationship. To my surprise, having a steady boyfriend was not that much different than having a friend. We hadn't really been able to go on any 'dates' since the 'accident', but he picked me up every morning for school, since I couldn't drive, and dropped me off every afternoon. It wasn't that much different than pretend-dating him, although we did… kiss… a lot more.

Kissing was never something I had put much stock in, since the few times I'd been kissed before Ed had been mediocre at best, but kissing someone you actually liked was a lot different. And we did it. Pretty often. Jess had theorized that my frequent near death experiences were only increasing our sex drives. I'd promptly smacked her with my copy of _Jane Eyre_, because we weren't quite at _that_ level yet.

But when Ed had formally invited me to go to the junior prom with him, and by formally invited I mean asked me one afternoon while we were breaking the 'no seeing each other except on the weekends' rule and kissing in my backyard, I had just stared at him.

"What?" he'd said, defensively.

I'd pointed at my cast, and he rolled his eyes.

"We can slow dance."

"Or we could not dance at all and spend our Friday night taking advantage of having the town to ourselves with everyone at prom," I'd suggested brightly, but then he'd brought Alice, Jess, and Angie into it the next day and I'd promptly been shot down. Apparently, going to junior prom when you had a boyfriend, and that boyfriend was a Cullen, was non-negotiable.

Which was how I found myself trapped in a room with my three best friends, being forced to sit still while Alice finished curling my pin straight hair and Jess applied eye shadow, thinking about how ridiculous the whole thing was.

"Bella, if you don't wipe that bitchy look off your face I'm going to give you a clown look," Jess declared threateningly.

I acquiesced, smoothing the front of my dress. I'd ordered it from a catalogue, after conveniently scheduling a physical therapy session the afternoon Jess and Angie had gone back to Port Angeles for shopping.

The dress was long, flowing, deep blue, which, although I didn't think it particularly brought out anything in me, did look nice enough, I'd admit. It was V-neck, sleeveless, and Alice claimed it 'exemplified my small waist'.

Alice's own dress was suitably dramatic; black, ankle length, with a slit up the front ending in a ruffle that on a taller, curvier girl might have resulted in some protests from chaperones. It was cap sleeved, belted, and looked like something Audrey Hepburn might have worn, which meant that on gothic Alice it looked slightly demented.

"Done," Jess said happily, stepping back to check her own shimmering lip gloss in the mirror. She adjusted the pin holding her curly side bangs back. Her dress was just slightly shorter than my own, revealing her ankle-treacherous heels, and a vivid coral color, with a glittering, sequined bodice section and a halter style top. Her and Mike had been arguing over whether his tie was the right shade to match it or too 'orange'.

I immediately stood up, holding the chair for support, since Alice had finally backed off with the curling iron, and shared a look of exasperation with Angela, hunched in the corner due to my room's low ceiling.

"They've been waiting downstairs for ten minutes now," she said worriedly. "I don't think we should keep them waiting much longer."

"Oooh, someone's excited for Bennnn to see her," Jess snickered. Angie immediately went scarlet, almost matching her elegant, ruby red, asymmetrical dress, which showed off her impressive height and slim figure without being very showy.

She'd asked Ben, who was actually pretty short, to come with her to junior prom two weeks ago, shocking all of us, since she'd never mentioned him before, and no one had ever seen them so much as look at each other in school. Ben was friends with Eric, appropriately nerdy, but goodnatured, and, above all, seemed to worship the ground Angie walked on, to everyone's approval.

"Let's just go," I cut in, before it devolved into a spat, and snatched up my purse, which had been lying on my bed.

"Picture of you three first," Alice insisted, and forced us to shuffle in front of the doorway, before snapping a quick picture like an excited mother and winking at me.

I came down first, red faced as my crutches made the stairs creak and groan like nothing else, and glanced at Edward, who seemed caught between a triumphant smirk and a shocked look. Presumably at how well I cleaned up, since it wasn't as if I'd started wearing makeup galore in the last month or so. Mike, Ben, and Jasper looked similarly impressed. My dad, hovering in the background, gruffly made us all pose for just one picture, before sending us on our way.

"Bella, no after parties," he told me sternly, and I waited until I was out the door to roll my eyes.

"You won't be missing much," Jess snorted. "Lauren thinks she's throwing this massive rager, but Mike and I aren't even going."

"We're going camping over the weekend," Mike shrugged. "My dad will kill me if I'm too hung over to help pack up the car."

Our ride to prom was not a limo; it was Ben's mom's mini van, which was less than stately but could fit six, and that was what mattered. I mourned the fact that under my dress I was wearing a sandal on one foot, a boot on the other, and tried not to let my thoughts get too negative. I thought I was getting better; being around Ed, having actual friends, helped.

I had the summer to look forward to; I'd gotten a job working part time at the library, and another trip to the beach at La Push was imminent. I was going to spend the last two weeks before school started up again visiting Mom and Phil in California, before the baby came. Things were… things were looking up, which was kind of insane. Then again, what about my life was sane? I was dating a vampire, I was going to an actual dance, and I was going to be a big sister. If you'd told me any of that the year before, I would have backed away slowly.

The school parking lot was packed; it was overcast, but not very; no chance of rain tonight, to my relief. I ignored the fact that everyone had to slow their pace down entering the building to let me keep up with them.

Ed jokingly (or not) offered to carry me in, but from the look on my face clearly decided it wasn't worth the fallout. I spotted Lauren and a few hangerons by the gym entrance, sneering at me and my crutches, the stark height difference between Angela and Ben, and generally everything. Alice casually made a very obscene hand gesture at them as we entered, and it took a full two minutes for Jasper to calm down from the hysterical fit of laughter that induced in him.

The gym was decorated like every cheesy dance scene in a teen movie, balloons and ribbons galore. I resisted the urge to pop a balloon with a crutch, and instead sat down with the other girls while the boys went to get punch.

I was surprised Alice had so easily managed to slip into my friend circle. Ed was one thing- he was my boyfriend, and had already been popular enough beforehand. But I never would have imagined Alice and Jess chatting away like best friends, and even Angie seemed to speak up more when she was around. It could just have been Jasper's influence, but I had my doubts.

"It's this one thing that's got me trippin', this one thing my soul may be feelin'-'" was blasting over the speakers, and as soon as the boys were back Jess and Alice dragged Mike and Jasper onto the dance floor. Ben and Angela soon followed, albeit far more cautiously, leaving me and Edward alone at the table.

"If you really don't want to dance tonight we don't have to." He was looking at me in a way that made heat creep across my face.

"If we're here we might as well," I said stubbornly, but squeezed his hand under the table. "I'm… I'm glad I'm here with you."

He smiled, and looked younger than seventeen; it made something catch in my throat for a moment. "Me too."

After a few minutes a slower song came on, Christina Aguilera or something, and we hobbled onto the dance floor together. Our dancing was awful; he was quite good, but I couldn't move around much, although he did lift me up by the waist at one point- I yelped and everyone looked our way.

"Sorry," he muttered. "Couldn't resist."

I vengefully pecked him on the lips. "I'll get my comeuppance later. There's somewhere I want us to go after this."

"Your dad said no after parties," he reminded me, as we slowly moved in a spiraling circle that never seemed to end.

"Do you even know me at all?" I laughed. "You'll see."

We didn't dance all through prom; I was tired quicker than I would have been without having to lug around a heavy cast on my leg, and we mostly sat and talked. Alice and Jasper sat with us; when I encouraged them to go dance she just laughed and said they'd danced enough for a hundred lifetimes.

We talked about the present; to speak of the future seemed…. wrong right now. I didn't know what the future would be, if there would even be a future. When I'd gotten together with Edward, it had been with the unspoken agreement that we only think of the here and now. We couldn't afford to look that far ahead. And if Alice knew, she said nothing, and I was grateful.

By eleven the gym was clearing out; Ben and Angela dropped us all back off my house, where everyone's cars were lined down the street. Dad's cruiser was gone; I assumed there'd already been a call down to the station about rowdy teens. Mike and Jess left, as did Alice and Jasper, and when it was just Edward and I in the driveway we headed into the house.

"Wait here," I instructed him in the living room, and limped up the stairs as fast as possible. I struggled out of my dress and into some more comfortable clothes, and pulled my already fading curls into a ponytail. I limped back downstairs, and led him outside to Toy Truck, who, after a trip to the mechanic was looking good as new… mostly. He had to drive, of course, but the look on his face was worth it as we pulled out of the driveway.

"Where to?" he asked, bemusedly, and I began rattling off directions.

By the time we hit the end of the bumpy dirt road he was smiling, but as he stepped down from the truck said smugly, "I thought you hated riding on my back."

"Things change," I reasoned.

He set me down when we reached the meadow. The outline of the moon was just visible behind the clouds overhead. If the wildflowers had been blooming in March, they covered every inch of the meadow in May. In the dark Edward didn't need to stay under the shadow of the gnarled old tree; he sat down in the long grass and helped me onto the ground beside him.

We sat there in silence for a minute or two, watching the clouds drift by in the night sky above us.

"Do you think this place will always be here?" I asked suddenly.

He frowned. "Maybe. Maybe not. …I hope it will be."

I leaned my head against his chest; he'd left his suit jacket in the car and I could feel his heart thudding steadily under his dress shirt and tie.

"We're here, though."

"We are," he agreed, and we went back to watching the clouds.

_I only think of you on two occasions; that's night and day._

_\- Babyface, 'Two Occasions'_


End file.
